Change Management (CM) encompasses all activities, tasks, and measures intended to bring about sweeping, cross-departmental, and comprehensive changes in a company. These are typically designed to realize new structures, systems, strategies, behaviors, or processes. Thus, CM covers all aspects of implementing change processes. The main task of Change Management is to systematically, actively, methodically, and effectively intervene in adaptation processes. The individual steps of the change process should be strategically planned, monitored, and stabilized to successfully implement the change.
These are changes to a service or the IT infrastructure where the risk is low. These changes are processed following a predefined and tested procedure. A practical example is the replacement of a printer.
These are changes that need to be implemented as quickly as possible, for instance, to fix a security gap or a major incident.
These include all changes that are neither Standard nor Emergency changes. These must go through a change process before they can be approved or installed. If the change is associated with high risk, a designated employee decides whether it can still be implemented.
The main objective of CM is to strategically assess, approve, implement, and evaluate all changes in the IT infrastructure. You can achieve this goal by following these steps:
While a Change is an action taken to improve your company's IT infrastructure and minimize outages, an Incident is a single event which occurs when a service in your company isn't working as planned. A Problem, on the other hand, refers to recurring failures or incidents.
CM makes change processes more efficient and straightforward, thereby reducing risk for outages and possible problems. The strategically thought-out process used in CM protects against unnecessary errors. Should a problem still occur, the individual steps of the process can be traced easily, and the source of the problem can be quickly identified.
CM provides a well-structured process that speeds up the implementation of changes.
The progress of the change process can be tracked and monitored in detail.
CM can also make your processes more transparent, thereby improving communication with other involved employees.
CM also enables a better estimation of costs for planned changed and allows for corrections and adjustments if necessary.
