Maximising the Benefits of Change Management: Strategies for Maturing Your Processes

Change management is the process of identifying, evaluating, and implementing changes to an organisation’s products, services, or processes.  In the context of service management, it is essential for maintaining the stability, security, and performance of an organisation’s IT infrastructure and associated services.  Maturing the change management process can lead to significant benefits across service management and for senior business leaders, process owners, and, importantly, those who raise, approve, and implement the changes. 

In most organisations, change management and by virtue of association, change managers strike fear in the heart of every developer I have ever had the pleasure of working with.  I am sure you are familiar with the words “time-consuming”, “waste of time”, “I don’t do process”, or “it is not relevant to me or my job”.  

Change management is and should be an integral part of every IT organisation.  But what is the difference between a good change process and a great one?  

It will vary from organisation to organisation, and this is key.  Understanding your unique business needs allows you to implement business-aligned policies and processes and, if needed, make changes to your ITSM tooling.  

One of the key benefits of a robust change management process is reducing the risk of service interruption.  By operating a structured change management process, organisations can ensure that changes are thoroughly evaluated and tested before they are implemented.  This minimises the risk of unintended consequences, ensures that changes are controlled and predictable, and supports overall operational resilience. 

Automation is one of the key considerations when looking to maximise the effectiveness of your change process.  By integrating change management with DevOps processes, organisations can ensure that changes are implemented promptly, efficiently, and aligned with the organisation’s software development lifecycle. 

But what about organisations that have not adopted DevOps?  What strategies are out there to enable them to deliver at pace while still having the overarching controls needed to deliver change?  One-touch or zero-touch change could be the answer.  Partially automating the process allows greater flexibility, helps organisations streamline the approval process and reduce lead times. 

In short, change management is essential for an operationally secure, resilient, and effective IT infrastructure.  In addition, maturing and automating the change management process can lead to significant efficiencies and benefits, such as reducing the risk of service interruption, improving communication and collaboration, integrating with DevOps, and achieving zero-touch.   

To find out how a great Change Management process can improve your organisation’s operational resilience and improve time-to-value efficiencies, contact one of our Change Management consultants to arrange a chat.