Hi guys,

Just as simple as this, Change management or configuration management, which one should be implemented first?

Thank you very much in advance.

Mohammed

Hi Mohammed,

Thank you for your question.

Change Management and Configuration Management are both closely related and fall into what we at itSM Solutions LLC call the “stabilization” processes. They help your infrastructure achieve the stability that is necessary before you can truly reap the benefits of the Service Delivery processes such as Service Level Management, Availability Management, Capacity Management, IT Service Continuity Management and Financial Management.

Change Management relies heavily on Configuration Management in three primary areas – assessing the scope of a Change, maintaining baseline configurations to support backing out a change if necessary, and maintaining information about the Requests for Change (RFCs) in progress.

Having a mature Configuration Management helps immensely in supporting Change Management. Yet, without consistent Change Management policies and procedures, the organization’s configuration faces the risks associated with uncontrolled change.

However, the reality of the situation is that bringing Configuration Management into an organization is a medium-term project, taking a year or more before an organization can completely implement all of the Configuration Management activities. These include:

• Planning Configuration Management policies and procedures;
• Determining the best methods to Identify your Configuration Items (CI);
• Loading and determining how to Control the Configuration Management Database (CMDB);
• Planning how to track the Status of a CI through its lifecycle; and
• Verifying and auditing the CMDB.

Recognizing the challenge of bringing an entire infrastructure under the control of Configuration Management, many companies elect to phase in Configuration Management over time. You can do this through several means:

• Add a Configuration Management task to each new project plan within the IT infrastructure;
• Implement Configuration Management one-by-one in different organizational units in a multi-location organization;
• Bring different IT services into compliance one-by-one;
• Etc.

Change Management, on the other hand, is difficult to implement in a piece-meal basis. Although you can implement Configuration Management in phases, generally the entire organization has to work under the same Change Management processes in order to avoid chaos.

That said, you can implement Change Management in conjunction with Configuration Management if you consider how you will fill in the voids that would be provided by a mature Configuration Management process. For example:

• Use existing configuration components to assist in scoping the size and impact of a proposed change;
• Introduce and enforce back-out plans as part of each Change and include the effort necessary to define the baseline Configuration as part of your Change plan;
• Create a strong, centralized Change Management process that enforces the policy of reviewing all existing RFCs to ensure that Changes do not impact other Changes or are not already included in another Change.

I believe the above information should help you create a roadmap for introducing the benefits of both Change and Configuration into your organization in the most effective manner possible -- Janet Kuhn