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Changes arise as a result of Problems, but many Changes can come from proactively seeking business benefits such as reducing costs or improving services. The goal of the Change Management process is to ensure that standardised methods and procedures are used for efficient and prompt handling of all Changes, in order to minimise the impact of Change-related Incidents upon service quality, and consequently to improve the day-to-day operations of the organisation.
To make an appropriate response to a Change request entails a considered approach to assessment of risk and business continuity, Change impact, resource requirements and Change approval. This considered approach is essential to maintain a proper balance between the need for Change against the impact of the Change.
It is particularly important that Change Management processes have high visibility and open channels of communication in order to promote smooth transitions when Changes take place.
The purpose of this chapter is to provide information on how to establish a Change Management process, including the procedures, tools and dependencies that will be necessary to plan for, implement and run Change Management. The chapter also describes the benefits that organisations can expect to receive.
The definition of best practice in the area of Change Management is inevitably controversial; it is, however, generally accepted that Change Management and Configuration Management are best planned and implemented concurrently. Implementing Change and Configuration Management concurrently allows the organisation to weigh the risks of not implementing either process properly at the planning stages.
In order to be able to define clear boundaries, dependencies and rules, Change Management should be integrated with processes used to control very large organisational programs or projects. An example of how the processes could be integrated is shown in Figure 8.1.
Figure 8.1 - Boundaries between Change Management and program management
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