Managing change across the enterprise: making the most of IT investments. (Business of Technology).

Arguably the most important--but often under recognized--issue facing companies today is that to successfully run the business they must manage the changes that occur throughout their organizations. It is self-evident that change--to personnel, systems, processes, assets, etc.--is continually occurring throughout an organization; and being able to effectively manage these changes will both dramatically improve efficiency, as well as significantly reduce costs for the organization. But it's the rare company that has a comprehensive framework in place to identify, track and control these changes--either because it's failed to recognize the need or, more often, because it's been disillusioned by expensive, inflexible solutions or narrow definitions that obscure the potential of change management.

Beyond Software Change Management

For years, change management has been generally defined as a technique for managing software development. However, organizations need to understand that while the concept of managing change does involve managing software development and all the modem and legacy applications, environments and processes that go with it, enterprise-wide change management encompasses much more than just software development.

For starters, enterprise change management involves all aspects of IT. This includes managing the physical applications and the deployment of those applications to production and operations. Taking it a step further, companies need to have the ability to manage any type of IT asset, regardless of location or type, i.e., software, content, materials, people, etc. Ultimately, this enterprise change management will have an impact on virtually every department and line of business within an organization, including HR, operations, product research and development, sales and marketing, and so forth.

Process and Best Practices

However, change management is not just about having the vision to recognize that change impacts assets throughout an organization, it is also about recognizing that it's necessary to predict and manage this change in a consistent manner--which necessitates the development and implementation of change processes. Although process management is often viewed as an arcane science, in this instance it is an important step toward greater efficiency. Fortunately, there are industry-standard best practices that are emerging for managing the process of change across an organization. In Arizona, for example, The Institute of Configuration Management has developed a "how to" process called CMII. This is an advanced version of the older CM standard that applies the practices and disciplines of configuration management to business as a whole, not just software development. Underlying CMII is the belief that the same capabilities and principles used for software change management should apply across the entire business. Eac h organization that achieves CMII certification has the proven ability to apply SCM principles to virtually any aspect of its business.

Industry standards and methodologies like CMII offer organizations alternatives to a "roll your own" approach, providing enormous value. The federal government, for one, understands the benefits of using industry standards and has mandated that all contractors who conduct business with the government must be CMM compliant (a predecessor to CMII). In the manufacturing space, CMII is widely the norm. For instance, HP recently employed CMII as a company-wide best practice to leverage the benefits to process and efficiency. Underpinning these standards is the concept of closed-looped change control--in which organizations process changes, implement only approved changes, and prevent unauthorized changes or unscheduled changes, thereby eliminating enormous costs.

There are also numerous examples in the private sector of companies implementing defined, repeatable processes throughout the enterprise. StorageTek for example, a $2 billion provider of storage management solutions, first employed change management to control software development for a distributed team of hundreds after a major acquisition. In doing so, StorageTek found that it improved process control, product quality, team productivity and enhanced team communication. In fact, the results were so significant that the company is now looking to deploy the same CM process for its entire IT infrastructure. Clearly, the company understands the improved efficiency and ROI gained by utilizing a unified approach across multiple lines of business.

Enterprise CM Tools and Frameworks

Taking a broader view of today's economic climate, it is absolutely crucial that organizations take the necessary steps to better leverage and capitalize on their existing IT investments. Assuming the business "will" and the necessary processes and practices are in place to implement enterprise change management, the next step is to identify the appropriate tools and frameworks. These products not only make it possible to identify, track and control this change across multiple lines of business, they also ensure that the organization is not attempting to rely on highly suspect manual procedures.

The first issue is to identify whether or not a company's existing tools are appropriate for enterprise-wide change management. While some change management solutions are indeed flexible enough to address the wide range of enterprise requirements, most are designed as specific software development point solutions, and organizations that attempt to stretch them beyond their limits are likely to experience considerable pain. And having to rely on multiple separate solutions and tools defeats much of the purpose of taking an enterprise-wide view of change management. Ideally, the chosen solution should be powerful enough to cover a wide range of requirements while being flexible enough to integrate with other tools, when necessary.

The other aspect of a solution's flexibility is its approach to CM processes and practices. A product that forces a company to conform to its internal processes is obviously a nonstarter, as it forces the organization to conform to the tool, rather than the tool supporting the organization. More importantly, the ideal solution needs to be able to support both industry best practices (enabling the organization to leverage standards), as well as custom procedures that fit the resources each individual company has available and the particular way in which it operates.

When reviewing CM solutions, companies also need to be aware of how easily solutions can be configured, deployed and administered. Otherwise, they risk expensive consulting fees and long implementation times. Organizations must also take into account whether or not solutions can be deployed across heterogeneous platforms and environments, as multiple platforms are a fact of life in most IT environments. However, it's important to recognize that while some solutions do indeed support Windows, Unix/Linux and mainframe environments, others are merely "stitched together" compilations of otherwise separate tools. This sort of bundling simply does not facilitate uniform change management.

In contrast, a single, unified enterprise change management framework--which operates across all platforms and can be used by many different people throughout the enterprise--eliminates the need for multiple, repetitive solutions and delivers true closed-loop change management. Furthermore, tools that apply a central change management process and discipline across the range of enterprise platforms typically leverage a single repository, enabling far more advanced impact analysis and the ability to define reports and capture valuable metrics across the organization.

Beyond the Walls

As more companies outsource and collaborate with partners and suppliers they must also look beyond their own personnel, development and IT infrastructure to coordinate and effectively manage activities, internally and externally. The reality of business today is that more and more activities cross multiple geographic and organizational boundaries, making it essential that organizations look to manage the whole activity rather than a particular isolated project.

Complicating matters, these partners and collaborators may be using different systems, which requires that the CM process accommodate their environments. Some organizations are taking the approach of dictating that partners and suppliers adopt a single solution as part of an overall project. Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, for example, has taken this approach as part of its development of the Joint Strike Fighter, one of the largest single military development projects in U.S. history. By using a single overriding framework and process across all of these organizations, Lockheed can have better visibility and control over the entire project while avoiding the delays, problems and expense of integrating disparate systems. Ultimately, this should help ensure that they can deliver the project on time and within budget.

Conclusion

It is not difficult for companies in today's economic climate to implement enterprise change management, if they understand the benefits of automating processes to reduce costs, gain efficiency and improve competitive advantage. If an organization already has a documented working CM process in place, then it clearly comprehends that change management brings competitive value, such as completing tasks or projects more quickly and efficiently. To date, that benefit has been largely restricted to the software development paradigm, but it can and should also be applied to numerous other aspects of the enterprise. This sort of comprehensive change management offers a disciplined, pragmatic approach to predicting and supervising changes across an enterprise, delivering proven cost benefits and efficiency improvements throughout the organization.

James Rogers is a vice president at Merant (Hillsboro, Ore.)