IT Service Management, 3rd Edition

22 CHANGE MANAGEMENT

INTRODUCTION AND SCOPE

It is often said that the only constant is change. Accordingly, change must be embraced as an essential and natural aspect of any environment, but poorly managed changes can cause chaos within an organisation. Indeed, poorly managed changes are often the major cause of incidents. Not only does this cause disruption to the users, it also leads to rework that is frequently more difficult to achieve than getting it correct originally.

EXAMPLE

A major airline suffered several days of upheaval and embarrassment after their reservation system crashed and customers were unable to execute many transactions. The cause was traced to an inadequately tested change to the system. The loss, both financial and ...