Change Management

Change Management is an essential process of any IT department. Change management is a structured approach to transitioning individuals, teams and organizations from a current state to a desired future state. Change Management ensures that only authorized and carefully considered Changes are implemented. Changes can be planned and unplanned and or emergency Changes and there is a process to handle both.

There are a number of business drivers for a change management process:

1. Compliance - Your industry may require that certain changes be reviewed, approved, documented, and deployed in a methodical way.
2. Productivity - The smallest change in a user interface can result in hours of lost productivity if users aren't given advance warning or training.
3. Reliability - Prevent the deployment of changes that may break existing workflows or processes.

Change management processes attempt to answer all or some of the following questions:

• Who approved and/or made the change?
• Why was the change needed?
• When was the change made?
• How was the change deployed?

See also

1. Problem Management