Skip to main content

Change Management People

“Those Change Management people make my life so difficult sometimes!”

I heard this from one of my students the other day. In this person’s organization they have made a common error. They have confused the process of Change Management with the Service Desk, Technical, Operations and Application Management functions. In other words the people who use the Change Management (and other processes) have become the same as the process itself. This is an often misconstrued and misinterpreted idea.

We must remember that ITIL makes a distinction between Functions (groups of people who use processes to complete similar types of work) and Processes (sets of activities used to complete various types of work). I like to remind my learners that Functions use Processes (or people do activities). Functions are not Processes and Processes are not Functions.

There may be groups of people or work teams who use a process as their main tool. As an example, the Release Implementation Team could use Release Management as their main set of activities. But, they may also use Change Management (and probably will) or Configuration Management or any other process to implement a Release.

This is also true of the Functions. The Service Desk does not only use Incident Management. They certainly will also use Request Fulfillment, Access Management, possibly Problem Management, Change Management and many others. The goal of the Service Desk is to use whatever processes and tools available to restore normal service operations as quickly as possible.

The people in the Functions wear many hats and fulfill many process roles. Generally they can only wear one hat at a time, but could have a number of hats in their wardrobe. They may do Incident Management activities for 30 minutes and then need to switch to Problem Management for an hour and then over to Availability Management for the afternoon. They are still the same person with the same title, but they have many roles and responsibilities.

When a person tries to do many roles simultaneously they often find it difficult to juggle. It generally works better that we each do one role at a time and we each follow one process at a time. When we complete a given set of process steps we go on to the next or another process. And then to the next.

Because we can wear many hats and use many processes as a set of tools or a “kit” to complete an action or produce an outcome or output it should not be thought of as only one group of people who do Change Management. The processes are spread across the functions. You might have a group of people dedicated to the support and care and feeding of the process as their full time responsibilities, but those who do the process can reside just about anywhere!

So next time you hear someone mention the “Change Management people” remember they are talking about the people who are currently using the Change Management process. They might be members of Application Management or the Service Desk, or they might be you!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ps of Service Design - It’s not all about Technology

People ask me why I think that many designs and projects often fail. The most common answer is from a lack of preparation and management. Many IT organizations just think about the technology (product) implementation and fail to understand the risks of not planning for the effective and efficient use of the four Ps: People, Process, Products (services, technology and tools) and Partners (suppliers, manufacturers and vendors). A holistic approach should be adopted for all Service Design aspects and areas to ensure consistency and integration within all activities and processes across the entire IT environment, providing end to end business-related functionality and quality. (SD 2.4.2) People:   Have to have proper skills and possess the necessary competencies in order to get involved in the provision of IT services. The right skills, the right knowledge, the right level of experience must be kept current and aligned to the business needs. Products:   These are the technology managem

What Is A Service Offering?

The ITIL4 Best Practice Guidance defines a “Service Offering” as a description of one or more services designed to address the needs of a target customer or group .   As a service provider, we can’t stop there!   We must know what the contracts of our service offering are and be able to put them into context as required by the customer.     Let’s explore the three elements that comprise a Service Offering. A “Service Offering” may include:     Goods, Access to Resources, and Service Actions Goods – When we think of “Goods” within a service offering these are the items where ownership is transferred to the consumer and the consumer takes responsibility for the future use of these goods.   Example of goods that are being provided in the offering – If this is a hotel service than toiletries or chocolates are yours to take with you.   You the consumer own these and they are yours to take with you.               Note: Goods may not always be provided for every Service

What is the difference between Process Owner, Process Manager and Process Practitioner?

I was recently asked to clarify the roles of the Process Owner, Process Manager and Process Practitioner and wanted to share this with you. Roles and Responsibilities: Process Owner – this individual is “Accountable” for the process. They are the goto person and represent this process across the entire organization. They will ensure that the process is clearly defined, designed and documented. They will ensure that the process has a set of Policies for governance. Example: The process owner for Incident management will ensure that all of the activities to Identify, Record, Categorize, Investigate, … all the way to closing the incident are defined and documented with clearly defined roles, responsibilities, handoffs, and deliverables.  An example of a policy in could be… “All Incidents must be logged”. Policies are rules that govern the process. Process Owner ensures that all Process activities, (what to do), Procedures (details on how to perform the activity) and th