ITS Change Management Journey to Improved Efficiencies: Lean and Agile

Pamela Sampson-Smith
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Proctor

Change Management was spending most of their time following up on change requests lacking basic data. We will walk through our journey to improved CR data quality: process, tool updates, training, etc., while incorporating lean and agile methodologies.

Goal: Decrease follow up (both before and after the change implementation from 88% to 25% by April 2018

Why: Improve quality of change request data, faster approvals, more efficient use of everyone’s time

Journey:

Our journey started with our department incorporating the ‘4 Disciplines of Execution’ as a framework for identifying and acting on our goals. 

The strategy for the Change team was to identify one goal, a wildly important goal that would change how we do our work and reduce waste.   It had to be a goal that everyone could support and commit to doing, even in the face of our daily whirlwind.  It also had to be measurable.

We decided to look at the number of RFCs (request for changes) created each week, compared to the number of email follow ups. 

How did we start?: 

Each Friday we would review all of the changes for the upcoming weekly change/CAB meeting.  If a change request needed additional information, we would send an email to the user and mark the change request as ‘Additionally Follow-up’ required (check box).  On the following week, we would gather metrics showing the number of change requests opened compared to the number requiring follow-up. We utilized a weekly stand up meeting to discuss weekly commitments and status.

What we did:

  • CM team identified several areas for improvements for change process and/or ServiceNow workflow

Low Hanging Fruit:

  • CM Refresher (training) sessions to review the process and how to open a change ticket
  • Promoted the use of ServiceNow change templates, pre-populated with ticket information
  • Offered consultative sessions to specific groups or individuals
  • Working with SN Admin, applied simple changes to ServiceNow to help users, such as editing labels (save, save/exit) ,  extended deadline to submit changes from Thursday to Friday for approval
  • Survey – Sent a survey to our users asking for their feedback on things they would like to improve or modify for Change Management.  
  • Value Stream Map used to identify current and future process, reduce wasteful steps
     
  • ServiceNow Change Workflow Enhancement –
  • Return to OOB functionality, enables us to utilize SN features, functionality in current and future releases
    • Added copy change
    • Risk and Impact Assessment
    • Phases (chevron) displayed on change form
  • Agile: SN Developer met with us frequently, making small frequent code changes
     
  • CM Team Training:
  • Lean: CM team went through Lean Yellow-belt training, learning how to reduce waste
  • Agile: CM team, will go through formal team training soon

 

Where we are today:

Our journey has been quite rewarding.  We completed our goal:  Less than 25% of our RFCs require additional follow up by CM.  Our users are more empowered and providing more data in their tickets which makes our reviews faster and more efficient.    We are looking forward to next year for continued improvements.