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After speaking with many of our customers, it's clear that effectively managing ongoing change is nearly as important as the changes themselves. The failure to do so means that money may be wasted on undesired or unplanned changes - slowing down productivity and creating unforeseen costs when budgets are already stretched to the limit.
Here are six strategies organizations should keep in mind when implementing new change management processes. These strategies take into account key change drivers and pain points for IT organizations today - such as reduced budgets, limited staff, unplanned changes and stringent compliance standards - in order to achieve better control, cost management, and alignment with the business.
- Implement clear, consistent change processes: Organizations should begin by reviewing their current processes and using a tracking tool to determine what types of unplanned changes are causing the most problems so they can be prevented down the line. They will also need to assess where they have gaps or errors occurring in their change processes and the impact on their business, before they begin implementing new standards. With a clear, consistent, company-wide process in place for reporting, approving and tracking changes, businesses can ensure that the necessary parties are in the loop and aware of what changes have been or will be made.
- Involve the right stakeholders early: Involving stakeholders early is imperative on two levels. First, every department impacted by the new change management solution should agree to the process and be trained on how to use the corresponding tools before they are deployed. The new process should then ensure that all changes are reviewed and approved by the appropriate people within the organization - typically each one must go through multiple people at various levels. Implementing a change management solution will help companies "tap" the proper people, based on the type of change being made, ensuring the right stakeholders have signed off before any changes are executed.
- Establish automatic gatekeepers: While change is inevitable, companies can do their best to prepare for these changes by implementing an effective, flexible service desk tool to automate change management, so the appropriate people can be notified of changes, prompted to review questions and provide approvals with just a click of a button. This will guarantee that people don't cut corners or deviate from the designated policies once they're in place.
- Create an end-to-end trail: As changes are proposed, reviewed, approved and implemented, it's important to record every step. An automated change management solution will not only allow a company to track progress, but also allow appropriate personnel to see what's planned and identify common "hold-ups" in the process. It will also give managers the ability to demonstrate control and cost management to executives, by instantly providing reports and detailed audit trails of all changes within the organization.
- Connect the dots: By integrating a change management solution with an effective, integrated configuration management database (CMDB), companies can see the connections between all of the configuration items within the organization, so when a change is being considered or implemented, managers can immediately visualize the impact to various assets, assess the big picture and accurately estimate risk/associated costs.
- Make it easy: Companies need to keep change management simple by implementing a solution that automates the workflow. If the new procedure isn't easy, fast and as effective as or better than what's being used today, employees will be resistant to adopting it. Organizations should choose a change management solution with built-in, customizable templates that can easily be adjusted by all users, not just IT technicians, allowing more departments to take advantage of the investment and speeding up the process.
If you have any questions or comments or would like to see tips like these on another topic, please contact Deb Ingram, Senior Manager of Market Strategy for Numara Software at debbie.ingram@numarasoftware.com. |