Change management process - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The change management process in systems engineering

Systems engineering

Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field of engineering that focuses on how complex engineering projects should be designed and managed over the life cycle of the project. Issues such as logistics, the coordination of different teams, and automatic control of machinery become more...

is the process of requesting, determining attainability, planning, implementing, and evaluating of changes to a system

System

System is a set of interacting or interdependent components forming an integrated whole....

. It has two main goals: supporting the processing of changes – which is mainly discussed here – and enabling traceability of changes, which should be possible through proper execution of the process

Process (engineering)

In engineering a process is a set of interrelated tasks that, together, transform inputs into outputs. These tasks may be carried out by people, nature, or machines using resources; so an engineering process must be considered in the context of the agents carrying out the tasks, and the resource...

described here.

Introduction

There is considerable overlap and confusion between change management, change control

Change Control

Change control within Quality management systems and Information Technology systems is a formal process used to ensure that changes to a product or system are introduced in a controlled and coordinated manner...

and configuration management

Configuration management

Configuration management is a field of management that focuses on establishing and maintaining consistency of a system or product's performance and its functional and physical attributes with its requirements, design, and operational information throughout its life.For information assurance, CM...

. The definition below does not yet integrate these areas.

Change management is an important process, because it can deliver vast benefits (by improving the system and thereby satisfying "customer needs"), but also enormous problems (by ruining the system and/or mixing up the change administration). Furthermore, at least for the Information Technology

Information technology

Information technology is the acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications...

domain, more funds and work are put into system maintenance (which involves change management) than to the initial creation of a system. Typical investment by organizations during initial implementation of large ERP systems is 15-20% of overall budget.

In the same vein, Hinley describes two of Lehman’s

Meir Manny Lehman

Meir M. "Manny" Lehman, FREng was a professor in the School of Computing Science at Middlesex University. From 1972 to 2002 he was a Professor and Head of the Computing Department at Imperial College London...

laws

Lehman's laws of software evolution

In Software engineering, the Laws of Software Evolution refer to a series of laws that Lehman and Belady formulated starting in 1974 with respect to Software evolution....

of software evolution: the law of continuing change (i.e. systems that are used must change or automatically become less useful) and the law of increasing complexity (i.e. through changes the structure of a system becomes ever more complex and more resources are needed to simplify it).

The field of manufacturing is nowadays also confronted with many changes due to increasing and worldwide competition

Competition

Competition is a contest between individuals, groups, animals, etc. for territory, a niche, or a location of resources. It arises whenever two and only two strive for a goal which cannot be shared. Competition occurs naturally between living organisms which co-exist in the same environment. For...

, technological advances and demanding customers. Therefore, (efficient and effective) change management is also of great importance in this area.

It is not unthinkable that the above statements are true for other domains as well, because usually, systems tend to change and evolve as they are used. Below, a generic change management process and its deliverables are discussed, followed by some examples of instances of this process.

Notes: In the process below, it is arguable that the change committee should be responsible not only for accept/reject decisions, but also prioritization, which influences how change requests are batched for processing.

The process and its deliverables

For the description of the change management process, the meta-modeling technique is used. Figure 1 depicts the process-data diagram

Process-data diagram

A process-data diagram is a diagram that describes processes and data that act as output of these processes. On the left side the meta-process model can be viewed and on the right side the meta concept model can be viewed....

, which is explained in this section.

Activities

There are six main activities, which jointly form the change management process. They are: Identify potential change, Analyze change request, Evaluate change, Plan change, Implement change and Review and close change. These activities are executed by four different role

Role

A role or a social role is a set of connected behaviours, rights and obligations as conceptualised by actors in a social situation. It is an expected or free or continuously changing behaviour and may have a given individual social status or social position...

s, which are discussed in Table 1. The activities (or their sub-activities, if applicable) themselves are described in Table 2.

Table 1: Role descriptions for the change management process
Role	Description
Customer	The customer Customer A customer is usually used to refer to a current or potential buyer or user of the products of an individual or organization, called the supplier, seller, or vendor. This is typically through purchasing or renting goods or services... is the role that requests a change due to problems encountered or new functionality requirements; this can be a person or an organizational entity and can be in- or external to the company that is asked to implement the change.
Project manager	The project manager Project manager A project manager is a professional in the field of project management. Project managers can have the responsibility of the planning, execution, and closing of any project, typically relating to construction industry, architecture, computer networking, telecommunications or software... is the owner of the project Project A project in business and science is typically defined as a collaborative enterprise, frequently involving research or design, that is carefully planned to achieve a particular aim. Projects can be further defined as temporary rather than permanent social systems that are constituted by teams... that the CHANGE REQUEST concerns. In some cases there is a distinct change manager, who in that case takes on this role.
Change committee	The change committee Committee A committee is a type of small deliberative assembly that is usually intended to remain subordinate to another, larger deliberative assembly—which when organized so that action on committee requires a vote by all its entitled members, is called the "Committee of the Whole"... decides whether a CHANGE REQUEST will be implemented or not. Sometimes this task is performed by the project manager as well.
Change builder	The change builder is the person who plans and implements the change; it could be argued that the planning component is (partially) taken on by the project manager.

Table 2: Activity descriptions for the change management process
Activity	Sub-activity	Description
Identify potential change	Require new functionality	A customer desires new functionality and formulates a REQUIREMENT.
	Encounter problem	A customer encounters a problem (e.g. a bug Software bug A software bug is the common term used to describe an error, flaw, mistake, failure, or fault in a computer program or system that produces an incorrect or unexpected result, or causes it to behave in unintended ways. Most bugs arise from mistakes and errors made by people in either a program's... ) in the system and this leads to a PROBLEM REPORT.
	Request change	A customer proposes a change through creation of a CHANGE REQUEST.
Analyze change request	Determine technical feasibility	The project manager determines the technical feasibility of the proposed CHANGE REQUEST, leading to a CHANGE TECHNICAL FEASIBILITY.
	Determine costs and benefits	The project manager determines the costs and benefits of the proposed CHANGE REQUEST, resulting in CHANGE COSTS AND BENEFITS. This and the above sub-activity can be done in any order and they are independent of each other, hence the modeling as unordered activities.
Evaluate change		Based on the CHANGE REQUEST, its CHANGE TECHNICAL FEASIBILITY and CHANGE COSTS AND BENEFITS, the change committee makes the go/no-go decision. This is modeled as a separate activity because it is an important process step and has another role performing it. It is modeled as a sub-activity (without any activity containing it) as recommended by Remko Helms (personal communication).
Plan change	Analyze change impact	The extent of the change (i.e. what other items the change effects) is determined in a CHANGE IMPACT ANALYSIS. It could be argued that this activity leads to another go/no-go decision, or that it even forms a part of the Analyze change request activity. It is modeled here as a planning task for the change builder because of its relationship with the activity Propagate change.
	Create planning	A CHANGE PLANNING is created for the implementation Implementation Implementation is the realization of an application, or execution of a plan, idea, model, design, specification, standard, algorithm, or policy.-Computer Science:... of the change. Some process descriptions (e.g. Mäkäräinen, 2000) illustrate that is also possible to ‘save’ changes and process them later in a batch Batch Batch may refer to:Food and drinkBatch , an alcoholic fruit beverageBatch loaf, a type of bread popular in IrelandA dialect term for a bread roll used in Nuneaton and Coventry, EnglandSmall batch, bourbon whiskey blended from selected barrels... . This activity could be viewed as a good point to do this.
Implement change	Execute change	The change is ‘programmed’; this activity has a strong relationship with Propagate change, because sometimes the change has to be adapted to other parts of the system (or even other systems) as well.
	Propagate change	The changes resulting from Execute change have to be propagated to other system parts that are influenced by it. Because this and the above sub-activity are highly dependent on each other, they have been modeled as concurrent activities.
	Test change	The change builder tests whether what (s)he has built actually works and satisfies the CHANGE REQUEST. As depicted in the diagram, this can result in an iterative process together with the above two sub-activities.
	Update documentation	The DOCUMENTATION is updated to reflect the applied changes.
	Release change	A new SYSTEM RELEASE, which reflects the applied change, is made public.
Review and close change	Verify change	The implementation of the change in the new SYSTEM RELEASE is verified for the last time, now by the project manager. Maybe this has to happen before the release, but due to conflicting literature sources and diagram complexity considerations it was chosen to model it this way and include this issue.
	Close change	This change cycle Instruction cycle An instruction cycle is the basic operation cycle of a computer. It is the process by which a computer retrieves a program instruction from its memory, determines what actions the instruction requires, and carries out those actions... is completed, i.e. the CHANGE LOG ENTRY is wrapped up.

Deliverables

Besides activities, the process-data diagram (Figure 1) also shows the deliverable

Deliverable

Deliverable is a term used in project management to describe a tangible or intangible object produced as a result of the project that is intended to be delivered to a customer . A deliverable could be a report, a document, a server upgrade or any other building block of an overall project.A...

s of each activity, i.e. the data. These deliverables or concepts are described in Table 3; in this context, the most important concepts are: CHANGE REQUEST

Change request

A change request is a document containing a call for an adjustment of a system; it is of great importance in the change management process. A change request is not raised for a wording change in a letter....

and CHANGE LOG ENTRY.

A few concepts are defined by the author (i.e. lack a reference), because either no (good) definitions could be found, or they are the obvious result of an activity. These concepts are marked with an asterisk (‘*’). Properties of concepts have been left out of the model, because most of them are trivial and the diagram could otherwise quickly become too complex. Furthermore, some concepts (e.g. CHANGE REQUEST, SYSTEM RELEASE) lend themselves for the versioning approach as proposed by Weerd , but this has also been left out due to diagram complexity constraints.

Table 3: Concept descriptions for the change management process
Concept	Description
REQUIREMENT Requirement In engineering, a requirement is a singular documented physical and functional need that a particular product or service must be or perform. It is most commonly used in a formal sense in systems engineering, software engineering, or enterprise engineering...	A required functionality of a component (or item; NASA, 2005).
PROBLEM REPORT	Document describing a problem Problem A problem is an obstacle, impediment, difficulty or challenge, or any situation that invites resolution; the resolution of which is recognized as a solution or contribution toward a known purpose or goal... that cannot be solved by a level 1 help desk employee; contains items like date, contact info of person reporting the problem, what is causing the problem, location and description of the problem, action taken and disposition, but this is not depicted in the diagram (Dennis, et al., 2002).
CHANGE REQUEST Change request A change request is a document containing a call for an adjustment of a system; it is of great importance in the change management process. A change request is not raised for a wording change in a letter....	Document that describes the requested change and why it is important; can originate from PROBLEM REPORTS, system enhancements, other projects, changes in underlying systems and senior management, here summarized as REQUIREMENTS (Dennis, et al., 2002). Important attribute: ‘go/no-go decision’, i.e. is the change going to be executed or not?
CHANGE LOG ENTRY*	Distinct entry in the collection of all changes (e.g. for a project); consists of a CHANGE REQUEST, CHANGE TECHNICAL FEASIBILITY, CHANGE COSTS AND BENEFITS, CHANGE IMPACT ANALYSIS, CHANGE PLANNING, TEST REPORT and CHANGE VERIFICATION. Not all these have to be included if the process is terminated earlier (i.e. if the change is not implemented).
CHANGE TECHNICAL FEASIBILITY Feasibility study Feasibility studies aim to objectively and rationally uncover the strengths and weaknesses of the existing business or proposed venture, opportunities and threats as presented by the environment, the resources required to carry through, and ultimately the prospects for success. In its simplest...	Concept that indicates whether or not “reliable hardware and software, technical resources capable of meeting the needs of a proposed system [i.e. change request] can be acquired or developed by an organization in the required time” (Vogl, 2004).
CHANGE COSTS AND BENEFITS	The expected effort required to implement and the advantages (e.g. cost savings, increased revenue) gained by implementing the change. Also named economic feasibility (Vogl, 2004).
CHANGE IMPACT ANALYSIS Change impact analysis Change impact analysis is defined by Bohner and Arnold as "identifying the potential consequences of a change, or estimating what needs to be modified to accomplish a change", and they focus on IA in terms of scoping changes within the details of a design...	An assessment of the extent of the change (Rajlich, 1999).
CHANGE PLANNING Plan A plan is typically any diagram or list of steps with timing and resources, used to achieve an objective. See also strategy. It is commonly understood as a temporal set of intended actions, through which one expects to achieve a goal...	“A scheme, method or design for the attainment of some objective or to achieve something [i.e. the change]” (Georgetown University, n.d.), in this case the change.
ITEM	“A non-specific term used to denote any product Product (business) In general, the product is defined as a "thing produced by labor or effort" or the "result of an act or a process", and stems from the verb produce, from the Latin prōdūce ' lead or bring forth'. Since 1575, the word "product" has referred to anything produced... , including systems, subsystems, assemblies, subassemblies, units, sets, accessories, computer programs, computer software or parts” (Rigby, 2003); has (overlapping) subtype Subtype In programming language theory, subtyping or subtype polymorphism is a form of type polymorphism in which a subtype is a datatype that is related to another datatype by some notion of substitutability, meaning that program constructs, typically subroutines or functions, written to operate on... s ADDED ITEM and CHANGED ITEM.
ADDED ITEM*	Self-explanatory: a newly created ITEM; subtype of ITEM.
CHANGED ITEM*	Self-explanatory: an ITEM that already existed, but has been altered; subtype of ITEM.
TEST REPORT Program evaluation Project evaluation is a systematic method for collecting, analyzing, and using information to answer questions about projects, policies and programs, particularly about their effectiveness and efficiency...	“A document that describes the conduct and results of the testing carried out for a system or component [affected by the change]” (IEEE, 1991).
DOCUMENTATION Documentation Documentation is a term used in several different ways. Generally, documentation refers to the process of providing evidence.Modules of Documentation are Helpful...	According to the Pennsylvania State University Libraries (2004) definition, DOCUMENTATION is “[p]rinted material which accompanies other materials (usually non-book), and which explains, gives instructions for use, or otherwise functions as a guide to the major materials.” In this context, it can also be digital materials or even training, as long as it relates to (pieces of) the system.
SYSTEM RELEASE	“[M]erchandise issued for sale or public showing” (Princeton University, 2003). Consists of one or more ITEMS and the accompanying DOCUMENTATION.
CHANGE VERIFICATION	A determination of whether or not the result of the change implementation fulfills the requirements established earlier (Rigby, 2003).

Besides just ‘changes’, one can also distinguish deviations and waivers. A deviation is an authorization (or a request for it) to depart from a requirement of an item, prior to the creation of it. A waiver is essentially the same, but than during or after creation of the item. These two approaches can be viewed as minimalistic change management (i.e. no real solution to the problem at hand).

Examples

A good example of the change management process in action can be found in software development

Software development

Software development is the development of a software product...

. Often users report bugs or desire new functionality from their software programs, which leads to a change request

Change request

. The product software company then looks into the technical and economical feasibility of implementing this change and consequently it decides whether the change will actually be realized. If that indeed is the case, the change has to be planned, for example through the usage of function point

Function point

A function point is a unit of measurement to express the amount of business functionality an information system provides to a user. The cost of a single unit is calculated from past projects....

s. The actual execution of the change leads to the creation and/or alteration of software code and when this change is propagated it probably causes other code fragments to change as well. After the initial test results seem satisfactory, the documentation can be brought up to date and be released, together with the software. Finally, the project manager verifies the change and closes this entry in the change log.

Another typical area for change management in the way it is treated here, is the manufacturing

Manufacturing

Manufacturing is the use of machines, tools and labor to produce goods for use or sale. The term may refer to a range of human activity, from handicraft to high tech, but is most commonly applied to industrial production, in which raw materials are transformed into finished goods on a large scale...

domain. Take for instance the design and production of a car

Čar

Čar is a village in the municipality of Bujanovac, Serbia. According to the 2002 census, the town has a population of 296 people.-References:...

. If for example the vehicle’s air bags are found to automatically fill with air after driving long distances, this will without a doubt lead to customer complaints (or hopefully problem reports during the testing phase). In turn, these produce a change request (see Figure 2 on the right), which will probably justify a change. Nevertheless, a – most likely simplistic – cost and benefit analysis has to be done, after which the change request can be approved. Following an analysis of the impact on the car design and production schedules, the planning for the implementation of the change can be created. According to this planning, the change can actually be realized, after which the new version of the car is hopefully thoroughly tested before it is released to the public.

In industrial plants

Since complex processes can be very sensitive to even small changes, proper management of change to industrial facilities and processes is recognized as critical to safety. In the US, OSHA

Occupational Safety and Health Administration

The United States Occupational Safety and Health Administration is an agency of the United States Department of Labor. It was created by Congress of the United States under the Occupational Safety and Health Act, signed by President Richard M. Nixon, on December 29, 1970...

has regulations that govern how changes are to be made and documented. The main requirement is that a thorough review of a proposed change be performed by a multi-disciplinary team to ensure that as many possible viewpoints are used to minimize the chances of missing a hazard. In this context, change management is known as Management of Change, or MOC. It is just one of many components of Process Safety Management

Process Safety Management

Process Safety Management is a regulation, promulgated by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration . A process is any activity or combination of activities including any use, storage, manufacturing, handling or the on-site movement of Highly Hazardous Chemicals as defined by OSHA...

, section 1910.119(l).1