![]() In other words, this isn’t just a license for ad hoc change. It is worth emphasizing that “preauthorized” is not the same as “unauthorized”. Standard Changes are frequently occurring.The little risk that does exist is always well understood.Standard Changes are low cost and low risk.In addition, all Standard Changes have the following characteristics: ITIL defines a Standard Change as one for which the approach is preauthorized by change management. Properly implemented, Standard Changes can be the most powerful tool you have to reduce bureaucracy and streamline your Change Management process. We’ll save the discussion of Normal and Emergency changes for another article. This is precisely why the ITIL Change Management process describes three types of change: “Normal”, “Standard”, and “Emergency”. ![]() After all, changes like the ones listed above occur on a (more or less) constant basis in most organizations, and the suggestion that each instance would require a formal approval process is likely to bring the IT staff out of their cubes with torches and pitchforks. The problem with such a zero tolerance approach to unauthorized/uncontrolled change is that it has the potential to be unwieldy and bureaucratic. In order for Change Management to be effective, ALL of these changes are likely to be included in the scope of the process! What if I need to increase the allocated space on a shared drive (i.e.moving an employee to a new office or cube)? What happens when a System Administrator needs to make a change to a setting on a server? Does that fall within the scope of the Change Management process, or do we view this as routine operational “tuning”?.However, the key to a successful and effective Change Management program lies in the ability of the process to handle the changes which occur around the “edges” of the process scope – not just the middle. Once the process is in place, the tools have been deployed, and management commitment has been communicated, these types of changes rarely present significant issues. When we think about change management, what kind of changes come to mind? Changes to hardware? Upgrading a piece of software to a new version? Releasing a new service into the live environment, or deploying equipment to a new user? All of these things fall squarely in the middle of the Change Management process, at least in terms of process scope. While all of these areas are important to consider, I’d like to suggest that the leading cause of ineffective change management is, ultimately, ineffective process design. It’s easy to paint the causes of failure with a wider brush and say “People” issues are the root cause. Lack of management commitment is another one (and, in fairness, will sink a Change Management initiative every time). Organizational culture is also frequently cited as a culprit. So, why do so many organizations still struggle with this? Generic process flow templates are widely available, a wide variety of suitable tools exist to support the process. The need to document, evaluate, approve, schedule, and ultimately govern changes to services or IT Infrastructure is well documented. The importance of Change Management within an IT Service Provider is generally well understood.
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