I have a burning question with regards to change failures. What measure, steps or procedures could be used to help minimise change failures?     

thanks

Zishan

Thank you for your question. I've attached a popular article from a back-issue of ServiceTalk, which addresses this topic in some detail. I hope it helps. You can search the ServiceTalk archives for similar guidance at https://www.itsmf.co.uk/members/servicetalk/

Best regards

Mark

Hi Zishan,

There are lots of steps that can be taken.

I'd recommend starting by understanding what is causing the change failures. Holding Post Implementation Reviews for any failed changes is a wise move to do that, and running any review as soon after the change as possible avoids losing any key information.

It may also help to review a selection of successful changes to learn positive lessons from those.

Having done that, a more targeted approach to reducing change failures can be taken. This might include some of the following examples of improvement actions:

- Walk throughs of change implementation and backout plans 

- Revised criteria and approach for Change Approval Boards

- Human error causing change failure would benefit from additional pairs of eyes checking any work and implementation steps

- Improved Service Design and Transition steps for changes

- Review testing both before change is planned and post-implementation testing to verify the change in ok

- Test the backout plans! 

FYI: the Management of Service Community of Practice held an "Optimising Change Management" session recently, which will be available both as slides and a video recording to watch. 

Hope that helps,

Mark