White Paper

Best Practices for Change Management in the IT Infrastructure

Without effective Change Management, the gears of infrastructure management become out of sync very quickly. Change occurs everywhere, every day, in every operating organization, however nowhere is it more dynamic than in the technology infrastructure.

So many technology moves, adds and changes (MAC) occur that tracking and registering them becomes a primary function an organization employs to manage its business. The volume, complexity, and tracking of all these moves are challenging because of the various groups involved, systems employed, documentation, tracking, and reporting required. In a recent survey, IT professionals reported that they responded to 5 or more reporting systems and employed 3 or more asset tracking applications. While it is safe to assume any responsible organization has well established Change Management Policies and Controls, it is also safe to assume the human factors of avoidance/bypass and errors come into play. With this in mind, organizations need to continually review their Change Management goals and refine their procedures and tools for monitoring and validating compliance and exception tracking.

In an unregulated or poorly documented environment foreseeable roadblocks and problems, due to a lack of process in the environment manifest themselves:

  • Lack of ownership or lack of knowledge in the impacted environment
  • No control over high impact changes
  • Changes not occurring in the targeted environment to protect it
  • Poor or no distribution of notifications or basic knowledge of the targeted environment.
  • Systems not automatically updated to the change occuring

Download the white paper above to learn Change Management best practices!