Standard Changes
Essentially, Change Management is a risk management exercise. In Visible Ops we stress the importance of the Change Management process in “Stabilize the Patient” and reinforce that repeatedly through the book. Unfortunately, many groups fight with misconceptions about what Change Management involves and create an overly bureaucratic process that eventually collapses. Change Management needs to take the impacts of changes to the business into account and then use reasonable measures to reduce the risks associated with changes.
Using Vilfredo Pareto’s observations of inequality, we can expect a relatively small percent of changes to cause the largest amount of problems. As a result, those few, the 20% or so, are the ones that should be scrutinized by the CAB and have more rigor involved. We do not want to burden the CAB with all changes needlessly.
Some changes happen over and over with a known outcome and relatively little risk to the business. These are known as “Standard Changes”. They get reviewed by the CAB once and once deemed safe and appropriate, become classified as Standard Changes and are essentially pre-approved for building and implementation moving forward. This does not mean that they disappear from view! They must still be recorded so people can always determine what Changed when viewing a CI during Incident or problem management. Examples include installing a PC and changing a password.
Because Standard Changes flow through in a pre-approved manner, they do not burden the CAB and reduce burdens on the process. If a Standard Change does begin to cause Incidents or there are concerns for whatever reason, then the Change Manager can elect to revoke the Standard Change designation and require additional scrutiny.
Again, Standard Changes do not disappear from view. We must always know what has changed to a given CI. Standard Changes present us an opportunity to improve the efficiency of Change Management while still being able to track and account for all changes.