Change Management is a hot topic lately on my social media channels. Like my friend Jon Hall, I also am a long time veteran of the classic Change Advisory Board (CAB) process. It almost seems medieval: a weekly or bi-weekly meeting of all-powerful IT leaders and senior engineers, holding court like royalty of old, hearing the supplications of the assembled peasants seeking various favors. I’ve heard the terms “security theater” and “governance theater” applied to unthinking and ritualistic practices in the GRC (governance, risk, and compliance) space. The CAB spectacle, at its worst, is just another form of IT theater, and it’s time to ring that curtain down.

 

As a process symbolizing traditional IT service management and the ITIL framework, it’s under increasing pressure to modernize in response to Agile and DevOps trends. However, change management emerged for a reason and I think it’s prudent to look at what, at its best, the practice actually does and why so many companies have used it for so long. 

 

This was the topic of my most recent research, “Change Management: Let’s Get Back to Basics.” In that report, I cover the fundamental reasons for the Change process. It has legitimate objectives — coordination, risk reduction, audit trail — that do not go away because of Agile or DevOps. The question is rather, how does the modern, customer-led, digital organization achieve them? The classic “issue a request and appear before a bi-weekly CAB” is one way to achieve the desired outcomes — and likely not the most effective means, as I discuss.

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