ENTERPRISEWIZARD WHITE PAPER

Transcription

1 ENTERPRISEWIZARD WHITE PAPER THE BENEFITS OF CHANGE MANAGEMENT E N T E R P R I S E W I Z A R D 460 Seaport Court Suite #200 Redwood City, CA sales@enterprisewizard.com

2 Table of Contents Why do We Need Change Management?... 1 Real World Example... 1 Scenario 1 Before Change Management... 1 Scenario 2 After Change Management... 1 Benefit of Managed Change... 2 There is no One-Size-Fits-All Change Management Solution... 2 What Kind of Change Needs to be Managed... 3 Processing Change Requests... 3 Change Management Should Work Your Way... 4 Software Flexibility is Essential... 5 The EnterpriseWizard Solution... 6 Figure 1 Unlimited number of approvals for each change... 7 Conclusion... 8 Next Steps... 8

3 Why Do We Need Change Management? Change is an inevitable part of every IT department s mission. In order to provide effective services, IT personnel must be constantly aware of what needs upgrading, replacing and removing. Knowing which changes need to be made and having well-defined procedures for implementing change are crucial. Yet in many organizations, changes are made in a haphazard and uncontrolled way, particularly when there s a fire to put out. Change management provides a rational methodology for implementing and controlling change. A well designed change management system will: Bring change under better control by enforcing an appropriate approval process Improve change efficiency by improving planning prior to the change Improve communication about upcoming changes Reduce unexpected and negative consequences of changes Provide insight into the time being spent on different types of change through reporting and analytics Create a full audit trail of changes to key business systems, satisfying government compliance regulations or internal auditors (See our white paper: Reducing the Costs of Government Compliance with BPA for more on this subject). Generally the means of achieving these goals involve improving communications about upcoming changes through automatic notifications, making change scheduling more transparent, and ensuring that proper approvals are obtained and recorded before making system-wide or significant changes. Real World Example How does this work in real life? Let s look at an example of a typical scenario with and without change control. Scenario 1 Before Change Management A company has a server running a web-based application used by all staff members to enter their time. After a security audit, the CIO is told that access to this server needs to be restricted to SSL and all other ports closed. He instructs an IT employee to make this change, not realizing that the shortcuts the IT department has set up to access the application on all employees desktops will be broken by this change. The IT employee makes the change as instructed, without stopping to think about any impact this might have, and employees are unable to enter their time because they do not know why their shortcuts have stopped working. The change has to be backed out, users are disgruntled, and time is wasted fixing the problem created by the change. Scenario 2 After Change Management A company has a server running a web-based application used by staff members to enter their time. After a security audit, the CIO is told that access to this server needs to be restricted to SSL and all other ports closed. He submits a change request to the system, filling out required information about the reason for the change, and the entire process is managed by the workflow shown below Page 1 The Benefits of Change Management EnterpriseWizard, Inc.

4 Note: (A) symbols indicate automatic actions that occur at various steps, for example an to Notify of Approval. (G) symbols indicate a guard that prevents unauthorized actions. For example, only authorized people may be allowed to make specific requests. Because the request is for a production server used by all employees, it is routed to IT staff who enter information into the risk analysis fields and take responsibility for either approving or rejecting it. The form contains a set of checklist items for SSL servers such as test SSL certificate and test user access. The IT staff member installs an SSL certificate and after installation checks his own desktop shortcut. He notes that the server must be configured to automatically redirect http to https requests before the change can take effect. On completion of this configuration, the change is marked as Implemented. If some of these necessary steps presented a problem, the change could be rejected and the requestor notified. The tasks are completed in the proper order, employees are automatically notified by when the change request is completed or rejected and the entire process is auditable. Not only is the process transparent, but the system maintains a History that proves how it was followed in any particular case. Benefits of Managed Change Because employees are asked to think about consequences and plan for them before jumping in and executing the change, and because the right people are notified and asked to approve the change, errors are avoided. There is also a documented process that was followed and that can be reported on. Another benefit is that all the time it took to analyze the situation, install the certificate, and configure the server to automatically re-route http can be tracked in the system, allowing the total cost of making this change to be quantified. There is no One-Size-Fits-All Change Management Solution The way change is handled depends to a large extent on the size of an organization, the kinds of business objects subject to change, and the organizational structure, so no two companies will implement change management in exactly the same way. In fact, businesses are so diverse that it would be impossible to design a single change management solution that would be effective, or even usable, by all. While a software vendor can offer a reasonable change structure and some kind of approval process out of the box, it will almost never exactly match a particular company s needs. So change management software will almost always need significant customization, and it must be Page 2 The Benefits of Change Management EnterpriseWizard, Inc.

5 flexible and easy to customize, ideally without writing new code, to accommodate a large variety of structures and processes. Because you can t really buy a change management system off the shelf that will be effective at telling you what to do, you have the opportunity to decide exactly how you want to manage change in your organization. The first step is deciding what changes you want to manage. What Kind of Change Needs to be Managed? Definitions of change can be as diverse as the methods of managing it. The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) defines change as the process of moving from one defined state to another. While this definition is broad enough to cover a large variety of situations, it is too broad to be helpful when applied to specific problems. Companies must therefore make their own decisions about what kinds of activities constitute the kind of changes that should be controlled in a change management system. While most companies would probably agree that a change to an infrastructure asset, like the corporate mail server, should definitely come under change control, other IT tasks may be less clearcut. Take a common example: setting up network access and an account for a new employee. Some companies may consider new employee setup a change requiring approvals, while others may consider it a standard service request. Typically a change management system is implemented alongside a help desk or service desk, so the business challenge is usually defining which kinds of tasks should be treated as changes and which should be service requests. One reasonable way to distinguish between the two is to define a change as something that requires one ore more approvals, while a service request can be handled immediately by IT staff members. So if a supervisor submits a request for new employee setup for Joe Smith and no other approvals are needed, that might be a service request, while if the same supervisor submits a request to make a change to a financial report in Peoplesoft, and this requires approval of an accounting manager, that would probably be a change request. Deciding which business activities are to be handled as changes is the first step in implementing a change system. The main goal should be to bring the behaviors that are most risky, mission critical, out-of-control, or subject to audit under better control. Adding processes or tasks that already work smoothly without any oversight may not be helpful it can make the processes more cumbersome by requiring approvals and documentation, without offering commensurate benefits. It is often a good idea to start with a small set of processes that will be subject to change management, and then to add more processes later as people become familiar with the system and are comfortable using it. Processing Change Requests Some aspects of change management are fairly constant from business to business. A change will typically start its life as a change request submitted by a user, and the appropriate decision-makers will be automatically notified of the request. Page 3 The Benefits of Change Management EnterpriseWizard, Inc.

6 Decision-makers should then have a mechanism for either rapidly approving/rejecting the change or adding comments. If the request is approved, the system should be able to schedule, remind, and notify about the change. Users of assets affected by the change can be automatically notified by . The system can also automate other elements of the change. For instance, when the hour for the change arrives, the system might trigger a browser popup reminder or an to the person assigned to implement the change, send an to users who will be affected, and update any affected assets to change their Status to In Maintenance. Once the change is marked as completed, the system can put the Assets Status back to its previous value and send another to any affected users to inform them that the change has been successfully implemented. If the change system is being used to manage software application changes or enhancements, changes may be linked to particular releases and automation could notify someone when all changes related to a release are completed. Change Management Should Work Your Way Given a change management system with a robust rules engine to provide the kind of automation described above, it is up to your organization to decide how exactly you want your change process to work. This may depend on many factors. Changes related to assets are often handled differently from changes related to user accounts or software applications or to any of the other objects that you may want to be subject to change control. An effective procedure at one business may be totally ineffective in another. When evaluating changes, businesses will often differ in: Which groups of people can submit change requests The information required in change request submissions How many approvals are needed from whom for different types of change Whether emergency changes are handled differently from planned changes, and if so, how What happens if an approver rejects the change initially The complete workflow process that a change should follow Who is responsible for scheduling the implementation of approved changes Who must be notified of approved changes What steps need to be taken to ensure implementation goes smoothly Whether employees should track time spent on a change Whether changes relating to multiple assets should each have their own change request, or should be managed in a parent-child change structure Whether change requests should be able to be generated directly from a button in the support or help desk system Page 4 The Benefits of Change Management EnterpriseWizard, Inc.

7 Change management software must provide the flexibility necessary to align with the company s overall business goals. Further, to gain full value out of the system, it should ideally be integrated with asset and help desk management, since there is generally a close relationship between these functions. If you already have an asset management system, it is wise to ensure that the change management system includes API s necessary for easy integration. If you don t have an existing asset management system, then a change system that also includes asset management provides a more complete solution in the long run. Software Flexibility is Essential While the basic building blocks of a change management system may be similar across systems, these building blocks may be formed into very different workflows and data structures. Instead of hoping that a given software vendor s version of change management will duplicate your process and structure exactly -- an unlikely scenario it is best to select a software product that can implement your process the way you want it. A flexible product should allow data structures, such as tables, fields, and relationships between them, to be created and modified without coding. It should also have robust workflow and rules functionality, so that you can easily build the workflow you want, ideally using a graphical interface that will both document and implement the process you want. In summary, an effective change management system should have at least the following features to provide a powerful, tailor-made solution: Graphical workflow editor that can easily define your unique processes Automated mechanisms for indicating approval or rejection of a change integration with dynamic hotlinks for automated notification and easy approval at each step Automated alerts if users have taken too long to approve/reject a change proposal Ability to reassign change approvals when they are not responded to Integration with the other systems that changes will affect High-level management reports tracking how all changes have been handled Ability to require approvals from individuals or team members Intuitive interface for users For organizations that are subject to audits, the system should also be able to: Show auditors exactly what the change process is, without code inspections Demonstrate that the process was followed in any particular case, with full information provided on who approved any given part of the change and when they approved it. Page 5 The Benefits of Change Management EnterpriseWizard, Inc.

8 The EnterpriseWizard Solution At EnterpriseWizard, we have been implementing change management and help desk systems for over a decade, for both small and large organizations. EnterpriseWizard s adaptive platform makes it possible to design and implement a custom solution precisely to your needs without coding, quickly and at an affordable cost. It has all of the features described above and is designed out of the box to be able to not only manage change, but also integrate with assets and help desk as part of a consolidated service desk system. The expertise of our staff can save both time and money, as we have already built a wide variety of systems. To give just one example, there is a particularly high variation in approval processes among different organizations. In general, large companies tend to have more stages of approval and approvers than small companies. At one large company we worked with, a change request could be assigned to any number of up to 80 different global teams for approval, and if any one team rejected the request, it had to start all over. Figure 1 shows a screenshot from this system, where all required approvals are shown in an embedded table within the change request so their progress can be seen there. In this case, the system automatically counts how many approvals are needed and how many have been received, and as soon as the two numbers match, it automatically changes the status of the request to Approved and sends an to the assigned team. The process is made easy for approvers, who receive an from the system with all the details of the change and a hyperlink that they can simply click to update the approval record with their approval. Page 6 The Benefits of Change Management EnterpriseWizard, Inc.

9 Figure 1 Unlimited number of approvals for each change At the next company we worked with, all requests had to be approved by either two or three individuals, depending on the type of change and its urgency. These two very different requirements called for completely distinct structures and workflows, both of which were easily handled by EnterpriseWizard without coding. Page 7 The Benefits of Change Management EnterpriseWizard, Inc.

10 Conclusion Implementing a change management system can have many benefits, particularly in terms of improving efficiency and reducing outages and downtime. It also provides a useful audit trail that can save huge amounts of time in meeting government compliance requirements. To gain the full benefits of change management requires software that is easy to configure, integrates with other systems and provides a high level of automation without burdening users with a steep learning curve. It also requires internal commitment in terms of thinking about the processes that should be subject to change control and how they should work in your organization. With the unbeatable combination of an adaptive and powerful product and a well thought-out process design, the benefits can be huge and well worth the commitment. Next Steps Sign up for a personalized demo showing your toughest business process automated. Set up a free hosted KB to try it for yourself. About EnterpriseWizard EnterpriseWizard, Inc. ( Tel: is the leading provider of powerful, easy-to-deploy, and cost-effective Web-based software solutions for business process automation, customer support, ITIL, and CRM for organizations with complex products or services. Its adaptable platform has attracted hundreds of customers, ranging from startups to Fortune 100 companies such as Chevron, NEC and Emerson Electric. Page 8 The Benefits of Change Management EnterpriseWizard, Inc.