The Change Management Paradox

Agile Change Management

According to ITIL the goal of the change management function is to ensure that ..

"all the changes that need to be made to IT infrastructure and services to be performed and implemented correctly by ensuring standard procedures are followed."

Having a robust Change Management process ensures that changes are:

•     justified.

•     carried out without jeopardizing IT service quality.

•     properly recorded, classified and documented.

•     have been carefully tested in a test environment.

•     are recorded in the CMDB.

•     can be undone by running back-out plans / procedures.

               

However implementing an appropriate change management policy can also run into difficulties:

For instance, if excessively restrictive procedures are adopted or the change process is trivialized then this could potentially result in insufficient stability or lead to poor quality service to users / customers.

If this approach is taken by the change management team it could be viewed by the wider IT team as excessively restrictive and overtly bureaucratic. This in turn could potentially lead to the process not been taken seriously, which would undoubtedly result in poor compliance.

All organizations deal with the change process in different ways, some have restrictive and limiting change management, while others use comparatively permissive methodologies. The keys is in determining what is the appropriate risk that should be tolerated.

As more development teams embrace the Agile methodology for the Software Development Life Cycle, this is of little use, in terms of speed of delivery, unless the change management process also adapts and employs a more suitable agile approach.

If the change team do not themselves embrace change then there will be a widening gap between the amount of change the developers need to stay Agile versus the change management's ability to conform to the standards for documentation, quality assurance and risk assessment needed to adequately protect a production environment.

Change management is one of the most important processes within the Technology team. Any organization will experience a large number of changes in order to accommodate new business requirements, to correct faults, or for other various reasons. All changes have the potential to disrupt a business, hence controlling the release of changes is critical. However it is also one of the most difficult areas to find the right balance between protecting the business, whilst also ensuring that there is the appropriate flexibility to allow the business to efficiently develop a continuous stream of new software capabilities.

There is a fine line between securing the production environment while also ensuring that changes can take place in line with policy - quickly, efficiently, but most importantly successfully and with the least amount of bureaucracy and unnecessary barriers.

  

Wikipedia - Change management (ITSM)

Andrew Simon - Striving for 'Agile' Change Management'

Level 3 - Can ITIL be Agile?