What are the best IT change management and release management practices?

1 What is IT change management?

IT change management is the process of managing the introduction, modification, or removal of any IT component, service, or configuration item (CI) that affects the IT environment. The purpose of change management is to minimize the risks and impacts of changes, while maximizing the benefits and value for the business and the customers. Change management involves planning, assessing, approving, implementing, testing, and reviewing changes, as well as communicating and documenting them.

2 What is IT release management?

IT release management is the process of managing the deployment of IT changes to the live environment, after they have been tested and verified in the pre-production environment. The purpose of release management is to ensure that the changes are delivered in a coordinated, controlled, and consistent manner, while minimizing the disruption and downtime for the users and the business. Release management involves planning, scheduling, building, testing, deploying, and evaluating releases, as well as communicating and documenting them.

3 Why are they important?

IT change management and release management are important for several reasons. First, they help ensure the alignment of IT changes with the business needs, objectives, and strategies, as well as the customer expectations and requirements. Second, they help ensure the quality, stability, and security of IT services and systems, by preventing or reducing errors, defects, incidents, and vulnerabilities. Third, they help ensure the efficiency, effectiveness, and agility of IT processes, by optimizing the use of resources, reducing the waste and rework, and enabling faster and smoother delivery of IT value.

4 What are the best practices?

IT change management and release management require a standardized and structured approach, such as ITIL, COBIT, or DevOps. It is also important to define roles and responsibilities for the change and release teams, as well as the stakeholders. Clear policies, procedures, and criteria should be established for change and release management, such as the types, categories, priorities, impacts, risks, approvals, schedules, windows, methods, and tools. Moreover, an efficient system should be implemented to support automation, integration, tracking, reporting, and auditing of change and release activities. To ensure success in this area regular reviews and evaluations should be conducted to identify improvement opportunities and lessons learned.

5 What are the benefits?

Following the best practices for IT change management and release management can offer several benefits, such as improved customer satisfaction and loyalty, business performance, IT service and system quality, and IT process efficiency. By doing so, you can deliver IT services and systems that meet or exceed customer expectations, support and enable business goals and strategies, reduce errors, defects, incidents, and vulnerabilities, as well as reduce the cost, time, and effort of change and release activities. Additionally, it can increase the speed, frequency, and consistency of IT value delivery.