
Maintaining stability and efficiency across IT services is crucial for organisations of all sizes, and our client's recent international expansions brought new challenges for systems and personnel. This is where the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and IT Service Management (ITSM) frameworks come into play, originally developed by the British Government in the 80s, ITIL formalises and provides standards for operations within the IT environment. Change Management is especially important within these disciplines to minimise disruption and ensure adherence to business objectives and operational outcomes.
Improving Change Management Service Design
LIDA was originally brought on to provide contractual support for Service Management surrounding the decommissioning of a location in Indonesia. The engagement was quickly extended to expand into new change management practices to help improve their ongoing IT operations.
One of the first modifications to the existing change management workflow was a unified form to submit for all Changes regardless of type, creating a single self-service portal link for users to lodge a change request. This form corresponds with one workflow that manages all change types and generates the required notifications. The client reported improved customer satisfaction and greater agility in responding to business demands with a clearer, more streamlined entry point to raising Changes.
Consolidating Change Information
On the core service desk side of things, each change record screen was built out to correspond with the internal Change Implementation Plan documentation, allowing Change Managers to see critical details within ASM and connected reports without having to open files externally. Fields were CMDB linked to lookup servers, people and services to allow for automatic notifications through the workflow, ensuring a high level of accuracy in the data and an all-in-one approach to bringing people along for the journey.
Enhancing Visibility
While changes have to be technically sound to be successful, it's often not the nitty gritty details that determine if a change is approved. By highlighting key concerns surrounding a change in the early design stages, we focussed efforts on the important impacts and business considerations before it was even sent to peer review or CAB approvals. This was a highly requested feature from management who wanted oversight of change activity and reporting capabilities to filter business-critical change records for compliance and auditing.
Communicate Change Information Clearly
Benefits of Implementing Effective Change Management
Implementing robust change management processes brings several benefits to organisations:
Reduced Downtime: By minimising disruptions caused by poorly managed changes, organisations can maintain higher levels of productivity and customer satisfaction.
Improved Risk Management: Proactive risk assessment and mitigation strategies help organisations avoid costly errors and security vulnerabilities.
Enhanced Service Delivery: Consistent and reliable IT services contribute to better overall service delivery and operational efficiency.
Compliance and Governance: Meeting regulatory requirements and internal governance standards become more achievable with documented and auditable change management processes.