Change Control - General Processes

[yehardeb1]

Morning,

First post in a while - appreciate any and all support.

I am working in a very unique and complex organisation with a lot of academics and engineers putting through incredibly unique designs into a commercial environment. One of our biggest challenges is getting a cohesive change control process that fits all aspects of change on-site (approx. 900 folk and about 7 iterations of change from property, hardware, IT support e.t.c.). We are working to adopt philosophies from the institute of change management - we see this is a closed loop model that can manage change. What I am interested is to gauge outside opinion on best practice, lessons learned, positives and challenges people have faced with any examples i.e. change notifications, processes, risk and impact matrices?

I appreciate any help you can provide.

Kind Regards,

Billy

 

[yodon]

Pretty broad topic to try to address in a forum like this but I'll toss out a few thoughts.

The place where I've seen such systems falter is when vague change requests are allowed / authorized. Just like requirements, the changes should be clear, constrained, and verifiable.

I like having a dynamic Change Control Board with the chair being someone who can recognize "good" change requests (and push back if the requests are not clear, constrained, and/or verifiable). The membership should be dynamic to allow only those needed to participate. Having too many people in the CCB can lead to chaos (conversely, too few can lead to poor results as well).

Maybe this helps get the ball rolling...