Stuart Rance posted an interesting blog about What Is Change Management For?. Then we had an excellent discussion about it on Google+, where some great stuff came up that I want to capture here in my IP repository (or “blog” for short). Tell me what you think:
I’m working in the heart of [change management] right now. I agree with every single word, except for one thought:
This article talks of my favourite dilemma – To Protect and Serve. They are often contradictory. If some part of the business – or some development team – wants to go faster than is safe for the organisational IT assets, then Change’s primary role is protection. There are lots of cogs in the machine that move change along, there is only one devoted to mitigating the risk. Where a conflict emerges between Protect and Serve for the Change function, Protect wins.
Stuart Rance
Thanks for the comment +Rob England. I have some sympathy for your position. As you say the issue is trying to get the balance right, but I have very rarely seen IT change management that is too focussed on agility and too little on protection.
What I see all too often is IT that thinks it understands business risk better than the people who should be owning that risk.
