Optimize Change Management
Turn and face the change with a right-sized change management process.
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Your Challenge
- Infrastructure managers and change managers need to re-evaluate their change management process due to slow change turnaround time, too many unauthorized changes, too many incidents and outages because of poorly managed changes, or difficulty evaluating and prioritizing changes.
- IT system owners often resist change management because they see it as slow and bureaucratic.
- Infrastructure changes are often seen as “different” from application changes, and two (or more) processes may exist.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
- ITIL provides a usable framework for change management, but full process rigor is not appropriate for every change request.
- You need to design a process that is flexible enough to meet the demand for change, and strict enough to protect the live environment from change-related incidents.
- A mature change management process will minimize review and approval activity. Counterintuitively, with experience in implementing changes, risk levels decline to a point where most changes are “preapproved.”
Impact and Result
- Create a unified change management process that reduces risk and takes a balanced approach toward deploying changes, while also maintaining throughput of innovation and enhancements.
- Categorize changes based on an industry-standard risk model with objective measures of impact and likelihood.
- Establish and empower a change manager and change advisory board with the authority to manage, approve, and prioritize changes.
- Establish easy-to-follow intake, assessment, and approval processes, and ensure that there is visibility into changes across the organization.
Start here – read the Executive Brief
Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should optimize change management, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.
1. Form strategy
Assess the maturity of existing change management processes and build your change management team.
2. Build intake process
Build a change categorization and prioritization scheme and define a process for requests for change.
3. Build core processes
Create standardized process workflows for each type of change and determine post-implementation activities.
4. Build implementation plan
Form an implementation plan for the project, including a communication plan, roadmap, and metrics evaluation.
Guided Implementations
This guided implementation is an eleven call advisory process.
Guided Implementation #1 - Strategize
Call #1 - Introduce change concepts
Call #2 - Assess maturity
Call #3 - Review roles & responsibilities
Guided Implementation #2 - Build intake process
Call #1 - Define changes
Call #2 - Build risk assessment scheme
Call #3 - Define change intake process
Guided Implementation #3 - Build core processes
Call #1 - Review core change processes
Call #2 - Review emergency change processes
Call #3 - Create post-implementation review checklist
Guided Implementation #4 - Plan implementation
Call #1 - Review metrics
Call #2 - Create roadmap
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Change Management Course
Let your battle with change-related incidents begin!
This course makes up part of the Infrastructure & Operations Certificate.
Course information:
- Title: Change Management Course
- Number of Course Modules: 5
- Estimated Time to Complete: 2-2.5 hours
- Featured Analysts:
- Sumit Chowdhury, Sr. Director, Advisory & Consulting
- James Alexander, SVP of Research and Advisory, CIO Practice
- Now Playing: Executive Brief
Book Your Workshop
Onsite workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost onsite delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.
Module 1: Assess Maturity and Determine Gaps
The Purpose
- Discuss existing challenges and maturity of change management processes.
- Define roles and responsibilities.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Understand starting point for change management and build a team to support new change management processes.
Activities
Outputs
Outline challenges.
Conduct maturity assessment.
- Change Management Maturity Assessment
Determine change team roles & responsibilities.
- RACI Chart
Define change manager role.
- Change Manager Job Description
Outline CAB protocol.
- Change Advisory Board Charter
Module 2: Build Intake Process
The Purpose
- Build a risk assessment process for incoming changes.
- Create a new change intake process including a new Request for Change (RFC) form.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Standardized process for requesting changes and evaluating and prioritizing incoming changes according to risk.
Activities
Outputs
Build categorization scheme.
Build risk assessment matrix.
- Change Management Risk Assessment Tool
Create RFC template.
- RFC Form Template
Create RFC process.
- Change Intake Process
Module 3: Build Core Change Process
The Purpose
- Develop standardized change management processes for approved changes, including process workflows.
- Determine post-implementation review activities to be completed.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Formalized and right-sized change management processes for each change category to ensure all changes follow the correct process and core activities to ensure change success are completed.
Activities
Outputs
Build normal change process.
- Normal Change Process
Build emergency change process.
- Emergency Change Process
Build pre-approved change process.
- Pre-approved Change Process
Determine post-implementation review activities.
- Post-Implementation Review Process
Module 4: Build Implementation Plan
The Purpose
- Develop a plan and project roadmap for reaching target change management program maturity.
- Develop a communications plan to ensure successful adoption of the new program.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Build a plan for tracking and managing changes and change metrics.
- Create a plan for targeted communications to key stakeholders, and build a project roadmap to manage the implementation of all identified tasks.
Activities
Outputs
Identify metrics and reports.
- Change Management Metrics Tool
Build change calendar.
Create communication plan.
- Communication Plan and Executive Presentation
Build implementation roadmap.
- Change Management Roadmap
After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve. See our top member experiences for this Blueprint, and what our clients have to say.
Client
$ Saved
Days Saved
Testimonial
Apple Federal Credit Union
$65,617
N/A
The Change Management workshop isn't just about the theory or the concepts that you can find in a book. Info-Tech facilitators really pull out from participants the essence of their challenges, and put a process in place that gives you some sanity, boundaries, and guidelines on how to work together. The facilitators help transform the program to face and manage your challenges, improving operations and collaboration among different departments.
Farm Credit Services Central IL
$65,617
30
Fernco Inc.
N/A
30
Dollar value impact - too soon to tell
KapStone Paper and Packaging Corporation
$45,932
N/A
We now have the basis for a good change management process and sold it to IT leadership. There was nothing negative around the Info-Tech workshop.
Client
Facilitator(s) effectiveness
INFO & materials effectiveness
Overall experience
Understanding of next steps
Testimonial
Kansas City Power & Light-IT Division
9.0
9.0
9.0
9.0
Sault Area Hospital
10.0
10.0
10.0
9.0
