Winston Churchill once said, “To improve is change; to be perfect is often to change.” If he had to deal with the modern IT environment, he might reconsider.
The world of IT faces enormous challenges, many of them very fast, with a lot of change. IT is being asked to add new systems, rip out old ones, move everything to the cloud tomorrow, make sure everything is virtualized, refresh all servers and PCs, and of course digitalize the entire infrastructure. and implement endless security provisions across all systems.
Of course it is impossible. Nevertheless, it is largely sought after. No matter how much or how little IT shopping lists are being implemented, an unprecedented amount of change is happening. Change Management Tools is an attempt to bring some discretion in the wild world of changing IT.
Read more: What is IT Change Management?
Best Change Management Tools
When it comes to change management software, tools, and platforms, there are a variety of options out there. Some are too specialized to change, others offer full suites for many aspects of IT management. CIO Insight evaluated several of them. Here are our top picks, in no particular order.
Change ServiceNow Management
Service Now Change Management is a single, unified platform to track and manage all changes occurring in technical teams. It provides depth of functionality to help convert submitters, change managers, and change approvers. It aims to simplify all ends of the change management spectrum, so that changes can flow quickly and easily through systems without increasing audit control or risk.
ServiceNow enables native integration to tools that allow for quick and easy root cause analysis if a change breaks something. In addition, the platform provides built-in machine learning that approves changes and provides vulnerability response, IT operations, and integration with other IT processes, as well as being ready for DevOps environments.
key differentiator
- Multimodal change gives change managers a way to customize change activities and flows to specific use cases using templates configured for any given environment
- Change Success Score uses the numerical score of changes and change submitters to automate approval for low-risk changes and evaluate the likelihood of success
- Change approval policies use individual change conditions to help change teams balance velocity, consistency and compliance
- risk intelligence Machine learning uses similarity algorithms and classification to predict data-driven change risk
- AI-assisted transformation Uses “clustering” capability to identify and suggest standard templates
- Configuration Management Database (CMDB) Processes change requests and release plans for all IT components
- conflict determination Provides a consolidated view of schedules
- Mobile Change Requests and Agent Considerations Allow teams to have mobile app experiences that facilitate the change process
- unauthorized change detection Automatically notifies change owners of undocumented change activity
- Change-based analysis and reporting includes pre-configured dashboards and visualizations
BMC Helix ITSM
BMC Helix ITSM covers a wide range of IT Management functions. On DevOps, users can create issues in agile software tools (such as Jira or Azure DevOps) directly from BMC Helix ITSM events without manual data entry. They can also create change requests from Jira user stories, or link multiple Jira user stories to a single ITSM change request. This tool enables DevOps organizations to maximize delivery agility and quality of service while ensuring governance and compliance.
key differentiator
- Includes a guided process on mobile and web, drag-and-drop change calendar, automatic and contextual collision detection, and impact analysis
- Provides essential information for flexible decisions about agent decisions as well as automated approvals based on historical performance of product teams
- The Cognitive Risk Analysis module calculates a risk score for every change that is being generated with an agile development tool like Jira and automatically creates a change request with that score
- Provides Swarm capability for agents through built-in console or ChatOps capabilities in Microsoft Teams
- Provide a single, consolidated catalog for self-service intake, including creation/management of defects from agile software development tools or allowing automated fulfillment of cloud infrastructure requests.
- Automated, rapid provision of services to end users, teams and departments through intelligent chatbots and automation
- Single-pane-of-glass service management for service desks across multi-cloud services, providers and environments
Manage Engine ServiceDesk Plus
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus provides visibility into tackling IT issues to ensure businesses have no downtime. This includes problem management to categorize, analyze, and close out issues, as well as reduce outages, improve agent productivity, meet SLAs, and manage the lifecycle of IT tickets. This tool ensures better end-user satisfaction and better visibility for IT.
key differentiator
- Analyze root cause and reduce recurrent incidents in IT
- Streamline planning, approval and implementation with automated workflows
- Find, track and manage IT hardware and software assets in one place
- Optimize asset use, avoid vulnerabilities and ensure license compliance
- Build and publish your service catalog with custom SLAs and multi-level approvals
- CMDB to track and manage all configuration items and map their relationships and dependencies
- Visually analyze the impact of changes and outages to make informed decisions
freshworks fresh service
Freshworks FreshService has a wide range of IT management functions. It enables IT to modernize employee engagement with integrated support channels and AI-powered service management as well as change management and other capabilities. The platform integrates service management on a single platform to bridge silos, improve time to solution, reduce costs and improve visibility.
key differentiator
- Deploy a change control process that allows for standardization and automation
- Integrate Change Control with Service Desk and CMDB to Reduce Risk
- Eliminate repetitive tasks and manual processes, and drive service efficiency and adaptability using no-code workflows and automation
- Onboarding, migration services and 24/7 support
- Set up multiple SLA policies for different business hours or event categories
- Resolve tickets based on priorities, and automate escalation rules to communicate about SLA violations
- Expand the knowledge base to help end users and divert attention from incidents
- Create on-call schedules for agents to manage important events
- Isolate problems, link them to existing or past incidents, and analyze root causes with Freshservice’s timeline of events
sunview changegear
SunView ChangeGear is designed to streamline change and release management processes that enable organizations to meet auditing and compliance requirements. It supports DevOps initiatives by streamlining change processes to reduce release barriers. This system provides an enterprise-wide approach to the change schedule to coordinate and track change activity with other planned events within the organization.
key differentiator
- Reduce risk and improve system availability by automating ITIL change management best practices
- Meet compliance requirements of NERC/CIP, FDA CFR 21, PCI and others by implementing documented change control procedures for non-IT assets.
- View planned change events such as change windows and blackout periods as a visual queue on the Change Calendar
- Embed the change calendar directly into the change request form to make it available for every change
- Speed approval with pre-authorization based on team performance
- Automation for approval and routing
- Codeless Change Model Workflow for ITIL, DevOps and Business Processes
- Automate the collection of critical risk documentation and change record history
whatfix
Whatfix focuses on mass adoption of digital technologies along with changes such as onboarding and offboarding of employees. It aims to disrupt application training, learning and support materials by providing contextual, interactive, real-time and autonomous user guidance.
key differentiator
- Real-time, in-app support optimized for individual roles
- Make training more effective by adding context and relevance to the learner’s experience
- Engage users by showing the most useful and timely information in the app
- Create content with zero coding
- ISO 27001 & SOC 2 certified, and GDPR compliant
topdesk
Topdesk helps service departments deal with all aspects of service management, including working together, connecting with users and customers, and some change management tasks. With this software, you can see at a glance what changes are in progress, spot potential problems, and manage deadlines.
key differentiator
- Register recurring processes and processes in templates to apply standard changes in seconds
- Establish dependencies between activities as well as authorization moments
- Add change template to forms
- Change Explorer provides a clear overview of all tasks and workflows
- Once changes are authorized, Change Planner lets you create and edit activities
- Topdesk’s IT Change Management Software Integrated with Configuration Management
- Best practices based on 5,000+ implementations
Key Features of Change Management Tools
Change management tools vary from vendor to vendor. However, there are several features that should be found in most products.
- change requests To give anyone the ability to request changes and document results.
- Change approval/reject capability With minimal disruption in everyday work.
- change risk assessment To determine the risk that causes changes to your IT environment.
- change policies To provide guidance on how change should take place, and what the process is for the different types of change.
- change scheduling To create a change calendar that is used to help reduce the risks of negative outcomes.
- Integration with Agile Software Development Tools To reduce the need for manual entry and render a real-time view.
- intelligent automation For change approval to enable faster delivery.
- intelligent flock, a contingency support approach that provides better alignment between support functions and DevOps teams. It helps to organize support resources, which is increasingly adopted by support organizations across the industry.
Benefits of change management tools
Many benefits have been achieved through the implementation of change management software and tools. These include version control for IT systems and applications, preventing too many people from being able to make modifications, and tracking all revisions and changes. Further change management systems allow rollback of changes that caused problems.
In addition, IT can integrate change management into larger IT management packages including incident management, task management, release management, project management, service desk, and more. It reduces silos and improves visibility in IT and enterprise assets.
Read next: Best IT Management Software Solutions 2021
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