How to Reduce unplanned and emergency changes

[prathap_buna]

Hi,

I need some guidelines how to reduce unplanned and emergency changes.\



Regards,
Prathap

[Diarmid]

Don't do them!

Set quotas for day week month and stop doing them when quota is reached.

Stop having lack of planning.

Stop having emergencies.

Set rigorous rules and enforce them.

Any combination of the above. Except that the first is all inclusive and needs no other steps.

It might be possible to give a different answer if it was known what your definitions of these terms, your environment, your procedures, your policies, your modus operandi and your reason for wanting to reduce them all is.

But you probably need a consultant for a job like this.
_________________
"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

[prathap_buna]

Thanks for your reply.

I know its silly question. still I need to get more idea on this.

1. Could you please explain more about to reduce unplanned & emergency changes.

2. If there is no change management process in a project. whats the impact with the business.

Regards,
Prathap

[Diarmid]

Prathap,

1. I can't explain more without knowing more.

2. There is always a change management process. It's just that sometimes it is a bit informal and unpredictable whereas if there is a defined procedure you know what to expect. The impact of not having a tried and tested formal procedure is that risks are much higher. not just risks of disaster, but risks of delay, risks of taking too long, risks of not fitting in well with other scheduled activities in the system management system, risks of having to redo work, risks of having to regress changes, risks of having to run for years with a patched up (or even botched up) system. risks of the project manager getting promoted for his heroic coping with not having established a proper project environment.
_________________
"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]

Measure to improve.

1. Find out how many unplanned/Emergency changes are there.
2. Find out why they are Emergency. Are they in response to incidents or in response to Business dynamism? Are they good or are they bad?

Put accountability. A Senior Manager should be held accountable for an unplanned/Emergency change. He/She should signoff the fact that the Chnage wasn't reviewed properly by all stakeholders and yet it went in.

A bit bureaucratic but works in organizations

Cheers
_________________
regards,

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

[Fsneddon]

Hi Pratap,

First let me begin by explaining how we classify these two types of changes in our organization.

Emergency changes: A change that is implemented to resolve a high or critical priority incident. Ex. Router failure creates loss of network access for Suite of 100 users. An emergency change would be implemented to resolve the resulting critical priority incident.

Unplanned changes, we call them 'latent changes': These are changes that were implemented without following the change management process, but created to document any change that did occur this way. We rarely see latent changes documented because in our organization, with the absence of discovery tools, unless a major incident occurs, it is difficult to know when a rogue change occurs except via the honor system.

It sounds like your organization is having to deal with emergency and unplanned changes that are resulting in change-related incidents, instead of the other way around, change-resolving incidents. In a previous company I worked at, when a critical or high priority incident occurred for a critical service, a monthly report was created to review each incident by senior executive staff. The service manager for responsible for each incident had to document a type of post-mortem report to explain what happened and what would be done to mitigate future reoccurrence.

I don't think I've answered your question, but hope my feedback helps.

Cheers!

[Phoenix]

Hi Prathap -

You need to make sure you have your emergency process documented in a policy and procedure. Once its documented it needs to have the proper signoff and support - a champion with muscle.

The emergency process should detail what is acceptable. I would also recommend that your process require a 'justification statement' and also must have at least the operations or applications manager and yours or maybe even the CIO (whoever is your champion).

Tie it to their annual review process as well.

Hope this helps.