With the publication of ITIL® ver. 3 in 2007, a clear stance was taken regarding the scope of change management. The authors of the Service Transition volume pointed out the rather obvious fact that changes at almost any place in the value network of service delivery could impact the quality of the services. Therefore, it is desirable for those changes to be under control. This includes changes at the strategic and tactical levels, as well as the operational level. It includes, too, changes among the suppliers and customers, as well as changes within the service provider organization itself. Changes under control might occur at any time throughout the service life-cycle.
With so clear a statement in place, it is curious to note that the scope of change control remains a major open question in many organizations. Curious, but understandable. For there are many issues underlying the decision on scoping change control. I mention here the more salient issues:
- the historical use of change control in an organization
- the desire to start with operational changes in production
- the inability to progress change control beyond the initial scope
- a deep divide between application development and production management
- a single change control process is not applicable to the full enterprise
I will review each of these points in greater detail.