Many years ago, Barbara Cooper, former CIO of Toyota, at the beginning of our Journey toward IT service management said to me that ITIL is like a religion with lots of zealots. She, of course, was completely right but the zealots formed a movement and that movement has affected the entire world.
Like many religions there is a ITSM "good book" that contains the teachings of ITSM and it is called the IT infrastructure Library.
Well, I have been doing ITIL consulting and implementations for more years than I ever thought I would and I am getting frustrated with the stagnation since 2007. Sure they have added a few processes and moved around the purpose of and position of others and that is a good thing. The foundations syllabus is out-of-date and anachronistic.
Today I want to officially propose that we rename ITIL Change Management to ITIL Release Management Governance. I have been in too many conversations over the years that have made it clear to me that implementers of the Change Management process has become all about the process and we have lost sight of the intent.
Organizations charter CABs and hold daily, bi-weekly, weekly meetings and review all, some or a few changes and discuss the impact and the priority of the change, whether they will approve the change, whether the change has the right type, back-out or push forward contingency plans. They talk about the emergency changes that occurred since the last CAB meeting.
The problem, and the source of my frustration, is that they don't talk about the release that the change is implementing. Many of the organizations I speak with have never had these conversations and therefore lose sight of the simple fact that Change Management is not about the change process but about governing the release.
I still believe that we need change control for break/fix but I do not think that we need a big CAB to deal with these approvals.
I hold out the hope that if we change the process name to Release Management Governance that it will change the conversations organizations are having, change who they are having them with and ensure that everyone will stay focused on the true goal of what we call the ITIL Change Management process.
R.
Like many religions there is a ITSM "good book" that contains the teachings of ITSM and it is called the IT infrastructure Library.
Well, I have been doing ITIL consulting and implementations for more years than I ever thought I would and I am getting frustrated with the stagnation since 2007. Sure they have added a few processes and moved around the purpose of and position of others and that is a good thing. The foundations syllabus is out-of-date and anachronistic.
Today I want to officially propose that we rename ITIL Change Management to ITIL Release Management Governance. I have been in too many conversations over the years that have made it clear to me that implementers of the Change Management process has become all about the process and we have lost sight of the intent.
Organizations charter CABs and hold daily, bi-weekly, weekly meetings and review all, some or a few changes and discuss the impact and the priority of the change, whether they will approve the change, whether the change has the right type, back-out or push forward contingency plans. They talk about the emergency changes that occurred since the last CAB meeting.
The problem, and the source of my frustration, is that they don't talk about the release that the change is implementing. Many of the organizations I speak with have never had these conversations and therefore lose sight of the simple fact that Change Management is not about the change process but about governing the release.
I still believe that we need change control for break/fix but I do not think that we need a big CAB to deal with these approvals.
I hold out the hope that if we change the process name to Release Management Governance that it will change the conversations organizations are having, change who they are having them with and ensure that everyone will stay focused on the true goal of what we call the ITIL Change Management process.
R.