What are your biggest change management complaints?

I've heard over and over again from customers and coworkers that change management is a big pain in the neck.  I'm trying to understand what the big problem is with change management.

Obviously there is a certain amount of pain that stems from the fact that it would be easier and faster to just go into the production environment and make a quick change that needs to be done.  Nobody's going to notice, and the change needs to be made, right?  For many people, change management is seen as a hindrance to getting the job done, and they would like to be able to eliminate it completely.

However, organizations need to keep their systems under control, especially in order to comply with SOX, FDA regs, etc., so change management is a fact of life for most companies.  Given that you can't eliminate CM, what would you do to change it so it worked better, or was less painful?

I really appreciate your feedback...

Comments

• Anonymous
  April 04, 2005
  How about some better software to maange change management?
  I'd love it to have some good system software that would allow for server configurations to be defined in some IITL fashion and then to be able to schedule change events, etc.
• Anonymous
  April 05, 2005
  So, Karan, what you are looking for is better integration with the software distribution tools, rather than just the workflow and approval piece? How do you feel the workflow portions of change management tools are working for you?
  
  Thanks for the feedback,
  Bill