Change Control Policies

I have been following a few blogs over the past several months; one in particular is that of Joel Dehlin the CIO for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. His latest post was about the “Maintenance Monkey”. The challenge we all face in keeping IT projects and applications running and the continual cycle of “bug fixes”. I highly recommend you take a look at his comments. I wanted to add one more thought to this line of business and that is Change Control.
What a wonderful tool to utilize in managing, not only projects, but customers. A strong change control policy, driven by the customer, will assist in the reduction of maintenance. I have found that customers often do not understand what they are asking for, by driving them to a change control board, change requests that where once considered critical the customer will not even make it to a change request. By forcing them to defend the request to the board they must take a closer look at the request. The change control board will also reduce the number of request as they begin to see the impact and risk assessments of change requests and realize the true scope of what they are asking for.

I think IT shops get into a habit of not giving the customer enough credit for the ability to understand. This mistake is due to OUR faults in speaking in tech languages rather than in business languages. I agree that a good project manger, program manger, etc. is vital and should be on the CCB in an advisory position, but the CCB voting members should be customers with decision making authority.