Change management

Change Management (CM) refers to any approach to transitioning individuals, teams, and organizations using methods intended to re-direct the use of resources, business process, budget allocations, or other modes of operation that significantly reshape a company or organization. Organizational Change Management (OCM) considers the full organization and what needs to change. Organizational Change Management principles and practices include CM as a tool for change focused solely on the individual.

CM focuses on how people and teams are affected by an organizational transition. It deals with many different disciplines, from behavioral and social sciences to information technology and business solutions. In a project management context, change management may refer to the change control process wherein changes to the scope of a project are formally introduced and approved.

History

1960s

Many change management models and processes are based with their roots in grief studies. As consultants saw a correlation between grieving from health-related issues and grieving among employees in an organization due to loss of jobs and departments, many early change models captured the full range of human emotions as employees mourned job-related transitions.

Change management (ITSM)

Change management is an IT service management discipline. The objective of change management in this context is to ensure that standardized methods and procedures are used for efficient and prompt handling of all changes to control IT infrastructure, in order to minimize the number and impact of any related incidents upon service. Changes in the IT infrastructure may arise reactively in response to problems or externally imposed requirements, e.g. legislative changes, or proactively from seeking improved efficiency and effectiveness or to enable or reflect business initiatives, or from programs, projects or service improvement initiatives. Change Management can ensure standardized methods, processes and procedures which are used for all changes, facilitate efficient and prompt handling of all changes, and maintain the proper balance between the need for change and the potential detrimental impact of changes.

Information Technology Infrastructure Library

Change Management within ITSM (as opposed to software engineering or project management) is often associated with ITIL, but the origins of change as an IT management process predate ITIL considerably, at least according to the IBM publication A Management System for the Information Business.

Change management (engineering)

The change management process in systems engineering is the process of requesting, determining attainability, planning, implementing, and evaluating of changes to a system. Its main goals are to support the processing and traceability of changes to an interconnected set of factors.

Introduction

There is considerable overlap and confusion between change management, change control and configuration management. The definition below does not yet integrate these areas.

Change management has been embraced for its ability to deliver benefits by improving the affected system and thereby satisfying "customer needs," but has also been criticized for its potential to confuse and needlessly complicate change administration. In some cases, notably in the Information Technology domain, more funds and work are put into system maintenance (and change management) than into the initial creation of a system. Typical investment by organizations during initial implementation of large ERP systems is 15 to 20 percent of overall budget.