Death of the CAB?

[S_B]

As we move forward with technology, and people running out of time more and more, we have slowly moved to a electronic CAB.
Don’t know if this is good or not?????

RFC's still come in, they get logged (seems to be several times) they get distributed to the client (in my case 6 approvers and 12 advisors) we discuss via email, if any further information is required i follow up with techo's or PM's etc and then inform the approvers.
The whole process takes about 2 days. (staff submit RFC's 72hrs in advance) so plenty of time to get approval and communicate to everyone.

In doing so, we have found that CAB which is run on a weekly basis is starting to become null and void. We discuss changes that have been complete and any emergency changes, but we rarely approve anything anymore.... + the discussion around emergencies is starting to move to email.

Would love to hear peoples thoughts on this? Should I rope it back in.. get more face to face.. It does make my life easier, but will it affect the process in the long run.

S_B

[Diarmid]

S_B,

Should you rope it back in?

You give no information on which to answer that question.

Is it working?

How many times has something been delivered sub-optimally as a consequence of your system?

For example, are there cases where a change had to be revised, aborted, regressed or re-done for reasons that face to face dialogue would likely have prevented?

Decision to change your process has to be based on its efficacy etc. and not on theory.
_________________
"Method goes far to prevent trouble in business: for it makes the task easy, hinders confusion, saves abundance of time, and instructs those that have business depending, both what to do and what to hope."
William Penn 1644-1718

[S_B]

[Diarmid]

Measure the time you spend processing the emails against the time you would spend organizing, attending, and writing up meetings. Add in the cost of lost time because meetings cannot always be arranged quite so quickly. I doubt if you will have a significant deficit.

Even if you do not have a deficit, look into streamlining the email communication:

format templates for various purposes

use forum software instead of email

develop culture of short and to the point

Not really my strong field, but there are bound to be ways of making it all more efficient.
_________________
"Method goes far to prevent trouble in business: for it makes the task easy, hinders confusion, saves abundance of time, and instructs those that have business depending, both what to do and what to hope."
William Penn 1644-1718

[Timo]

I don't want the CAB to die. We have donuts during CAB meetings so Boo to the e-CAB.

[changeborg]

We have been running a virtualized CAB (electronic) for the last 15 months for 2 of our 4 regional CAB's. We have found it quite successful and manage it via our internal company blogs utilizing a polling feature for the members to vote. I track who visits the forums to not only vote but also to view 'discussion' topics. This also creates a permanent record of every change reviewed in the CAB removing the need to type out minutes.

I too prefer the physical meetings as there is a massive amount of value there IMHO however with current management directives, the virtualization was necessary.

[Diarmid]

e-cabs can have e-donuts - probably better for you.
_________________
"Method goes far to prevent trouble in business: for it makes the task easy, hinders confusion, saves abundance of time, and instructs those that have business depending, both what to do and what to hope."
William Penn 1644-1718

[viv121]

CAB is dead. Long live the CAB. e-CAB is mortal too. We have auto-generated incidents when the smart NMCs and SMCs understand that there is a potential trouble with system/systems. It just a matter of little more evolution when we'll have system generated change-orders mandating signoffs from who's who. Could hold true for atleast emergency changes (patching/rebooting etc). Projects and roll-outs are normally discretionary to the people whose designation starts with C, so why CAB when C is telling what to do. No clues on system generated donuts !
_________________
regards,

Vivek
"the only statistics you can trust are those you falsified yourself"
Winston Churchill