IT Change Management Assessment

Client Need Summary:

Corporations spend significant amounts of time and money to implement a business resiliency solution that will protect their assets in the event of a disaster. Alternate/redundant data centers are built to house infrastructure that supports critical applications and data. When this implementation is complete, the corporation generally feels confident that its business could recover in the event of a disaster. In reality, applications are being changed weekly and patches are being applied to production systems. These patches may not find their way to the backup systems. An effective change management program ensures that the backup systems are as current as the production systems.

Approach:

If an IT Change Management Program is already in existence, its effectiveness is assessed by the following activities:

• Review of the policy and procedures documents to determine the program's scope.
• Review of the forms/templates used as part of the change request process.
• Validation of the inclusion of disaster recovery systems in the change management process.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of the program, including whether it requires check-box only or a more robust verification and follow-up.

The Solution:

An IT Change Management Program should be included if an effective tool is needed for monitoring and managing changes. The assessment performed will provide recommendations to strengthen the management of changes and ensure that business users, wherever they may be working from and working with, are all on the same page.