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IT Governance and Change Management
Michael R. Wood is a Business Process Improvement & IT Strategist Independent Consultant. He is creator of the business process-improvement methodology called HELIX and founder of The Natural Intelligence Group, a strategy, process improvement and technology consulting company. He is also a CPA, has served as an Adjunct Professor in Pepperdine's Management MBA program, an Associate Professor at California Lutheran University, and on the boards of numerous professional organizations. Mr. Wood is a sought after presenter of HELIX workshops and seminars in both the U.S. and Europe.
Like death and taxes, IT governance will always be with us. One of the major components of a mature IT governance framework is the processes and controls used in managing changes to IT infrastructure, operating systems and business applications.
While most organizations are coming to grips with the issues surrounding security, fewer are deploying adequate business practices when it comes to making changes to the fabric of their IT environments. Perhaps one of the greatest risks to a disruption in business is a poorly implemented change to a business application.
So what are the components of a mature change management environment within the context of good IT governance? To answer this, it is important to establish a working definition of change management.
According to ITIL, one of the three pillars that comprise the Joint Framework for IT governance:
“Change Management is the practice of ensuring all changes to Configuration Items are carried out in a planned and authorized manner. This includes ensuring that there is a business reason behind each change, identifying the specific Configuration Items and IT Services affected by the change, planning the change, testing the change, and having a back-out plan should the change result in an unexpected state of the Configuration Item”
When business applications and related infrastructures are poorly controlled, source code …
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