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Published: 28 Sep 2022
IT platforms face constant change, especially at the software level. Just as new functions are added to platforms through new apps and services, the capabilities of IT platforms change regularly through updates and patches.
Successfully handling these changes requires a clear and efficient system for IT change management, or change enablement. An effective change management process can reduce or eliminate downtime while optimizing performance across an organization’s IT environment.
Considerations for change management
Before implementing a change management process, organizations must understand what systems and tools they already have in place at a highly granular level. For IT environments, each instance of an app or service must be logged, including the type and layer of the OS it is installed on, the hardware drivers it uses, and the allocation and type of storage this.
In an increasingly virtualized world, this type of cataloging is becoming increasingly difficult to do. Automated systems move service instances from one part of a platform to another, new instances are created to meet organizational requirements over time, and old services need to be removed. Fortunately, a variety of tools are available to facilitate change management in complex virtualized environments.
What should be included in the change management process?
An effective change management process covers the following areas:
- Discovery. Organizations should develop a baseline record of the existing IT environment and the operational envelope around the resources.
- Dependency management. Most apps and services today depend, to some extent, on other components to function successfully. Effective change management must consider these software dependencies to ensure that changes are made with a full understanding of their effects on dependent services, including whether dependent services will affect to a new app or service.
- Priority. Not all change is equal. A change management system understands this and ensures that high-priority changes take precedence over less important ones.
- Risk assessment. All changes involve some amount of risk. An effective change management process should include the creation of a report covering potential risks, which IT admins can use to determine the priority level of change.
- Policy creation. Policies should drive all change. Most systems include a comprehensive set of policies out of the box, but they should also include the ability to add specific policies that fit an organization’s needs. Visual systems that allow IT teams to develop policies without the need for scripting make life easier for everyone involved.
- Change tracking. IT change management systems must maintain a live view of automated changes across the platform — for example, applying additional resources and rolling out new opportunities. It’s also important to include manual changes, such as those made by developers or IT admins outside of controlled environments.
- Managed provisioning. Change management tools should be integrated into existing DevOps systems to track and manage changes that development makes to the operational environment. Change and release management must work together to ensure smooth operations.
- Test. DevOps tools should provide a complete testing environment. However, when it comes to change management, organizations should ensure that the change management system will have test ownership or include a test environment in the system to eliminate confusion about what was done during the test.
- Remediation. The change management process should include the ability to revert to a known position if a change causes problems.
- Intelligence. A change management system must understand the impact of a change on the overall platform — whether beneficial, net zero or negative — so that IT teams can respond accordingly.
- Reporting. IT teams need insight into changes — both in real time so admins can take whatever steps are necessary, and historically to show trends such as memory leaks or performance degradation. Change management should also be integrated with the help desk and DevOps reporting systems to initiate trouble tickets as needed.
- Full audit. Change management systems must enable IT teams to perform forensic investigations on a platform to determine the root cause of any problem and determine whether malicious activity — inside or outside the organization — is the cause.
Tools for effective change management
Change management processes are put in place to ensure that an organization’s IT platform provides optimal availability and performance. Choosing the right tools can make change management easier. Examples of ITIL-based tools for change management include ServiceNow, Jira by Atlassian and IT Change Management by SolarWinds.
Changes have different levels of priority that tools and processes must consider. ITIL defines three levels of changes:
- Standard. These changes are low risk, usually repetitive, pre-approved and well understood. Organizations can treat resource changes to an app or service that are functioning normally as standard.
- Normal. A normal change is a non-emergency change that does not have a pre-approved application process. Most updates to existing software fall under the category of normal changes. While these changes may not have a fully approved rollout process, they are relatively low risk and follow a process that is generally well understood.
- Emergency. These changes are necessary due to unexpected errors or failures within the IT platform.
Many systems include a set of predefined transformation types to which these levels are applied. However, organizations must still take the time to decide where these types of changes fit on these levels and create rules to ensure that each change is handled accordingly.
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