Optimizing Change Management with Six Sigma
Business Need/Pains
Rapid corporate growth through acquisitions left a litany of varying legacy practices and technologies for filing, approving, and implementing changes in production. The Remedy Change Management module had been in production for several years with the deployment being hugely unpopular with the IT staff. In addition to problems with the tool, there was a lack of training, documentation, and environment information to support the Change process. Though the pains of the Change Management process and tool had been long felt, there had been no concerted effort to measure the potential benefits in modifying the process and tool to suit the organization's specific IT and Business needs.
Challenges
- A tool with poor performance, cumbersome functionality, and a non-intuitive user interface.
- Perceived negative impact on productivity, bureaucracy, and ineffectiveness of process imposed by the tool
- IT groups reluctant to relinquish control of their respective Change Management practices and tools.
- An organization with constant flux in personnel
- Lack of ownership and wavering executive sponsorship of Change process
- Tremendous skepticism of whether a standard process could be implemented across manifold groups, varied priorities, diverse styles, and multiple geographic locations
Solution
A technical architecture of a process, supporting tool, and an approach considerate of organizational Change Management techniques and principles was delivered. Evangelism, road shows, and a focus on the Voice of the Customer (VOC) built confidence among non-believers and made them feel like part of the process for the first time. A Design for Six Sigma approach was used to create a new process leveraging the best practices from ITIL Change Management. A refined user interface for Remedy Change Management and integration with Remedy Help Desk and Asset Management modules were customized to support the process design decisions. After three years of non-adoption, the combined process and tool finally addressed IT's needs across the board.
Benefits
- Realization of ROI in Remedy by generating true adoption of the Change Management tool
- Manifold increase in the number of Change Requests filed indicating significant reduction of untracked Changes to production
- Retirement of numerous isolated Change Management "processes" in favor of a unified process that establishes a common language and enables cross-functional IT Change coordination
- Procedures to correlate business-impacting problems with possible root cause changes
- Better assessment of impact of a Change to IT and to the Business
- Metrics-driven process improvement setting the paradigm for other ITSM initiatives
- Increased accountability by establishing overall process ownership and ownership for each Request for Change