require any special ‘doctoring’ of the Change Management process. Handle all resilience testing as special operation support activities.
To accommodate these non-changes, the Change Management process is modified, leading to unnecessary complexity and confusion – keep it simple, remove non-changes.
An example I saw was when pre-implementation testing for a Disaster Recovery test. There is no pre-testing testing. It does not make sense as the activity is a test in itself. The ‘solution’ adopted was to include ‘dummy’ testing so as to tick the box! Never introduce such compromises that undermine the integrity of Change Management.
3 The Change Lifecycle
The Change Management process must follow the same flow. Some parts may be automated, but none are to be jumped over. All changes must follow the same change lifecycle. Even if they are only in a particular stage for 5 minutes. Skipping a stage means you have skipped the required thinking for that point. You will miss things and make mistakes, which will invariably come back to bite you later.
No stage is to be missed by any type of change. There has NEVER been a ‘Latent’ or ‘Retrospective’ change that allows you to do the design and documenting (Change Record) after the implementation. Such actions are not changes. They are unauthorized modifications to production. Disciplinary action should be taken for anyone that does this and puts the production environment at risk.
Every stage of the lifecycle must be continually reviewed and improved, to increase throughput and remove waste. This harks back to the very purpose of Change Management.
So, review these three Must Haves in your organisation. Be honest, and see how well they are functioning. The very review itself will help you to enhance your Change Management process for all involved.
BTW, these Must Haves are true for all Change Management processes, and not restricted to IT Changes. The whole enterprise can benefit from having the right, organisation-wide, Must Haves.
Changes are small projects. They have a set lifecycle similar to that of major projects. It is important to recognize this. And just like with projects, there are certain points of review where an independent body must assess whether it makes sense to progress with the change in its current design. Do not commit resources to the next phase of the lifecycle if the change is not looking good, if we are not delivering a quality, valued change. Stop and rethink the change.
Gary is an independent Service Management Consultant seeking to assist small to medium enterprises in improving their Service Management performance. [email protected]