A key objective of every IT organization is to maintain high levels of availability and to support its end-users and customers.  However, it is difficult to meet these objectives when there are uncontrolled changes to the technology infrastructure.

Why Change Management is Important

Businesses report that uncontrolled changes to the IT infrastructure can result in increased downtime, reduced employee productivity and efficiency, increased costs, and poor customer service.  IT Change Management allows you to control the impact of changes on your IT infrastructure. 

A formal change management program, with well thought out and documented processes, can improve service levels and help meet regulatory requirements for change control (eg. Sarbanes-Oxley).

The Change Management Process

The change management process is based on an organization's unique business requirements, staffing, compliance requirements and other factors that will dictate the most appropriate workflow and software to implement it.

A "typical" process may include the following steps, which may be initiated by the IT service desk or directly by individuals with other change control responsibilities in your organization:

• Initiate a Request for Change, or "RFC"
• Appropriate staff (the Change Advisory Board, or "CAB") assess the change and its impact
• CAB approves the change
• The change is implemented, with appropriate testing, documentation, etc.
• There is a post-implementation review
• The change is "closed"

Change management is best done with software that allows for the creation, tracking, and management of the change cycle.  This process should be included in your service desk application, which would allow the association of incidents and problems with the requested change.

Change management is a key component of the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL).  It is tightly coupled with other ITIL processes such as Incident Management, Problem Management, Configuration Management, Availability Management, Service Level Management, and Release Management.