how to guide: change management

Navigating changeIn periods of upheaval to the IT infrastructure, network changemanagement is an essential skill

USER behaviour and IT infrastructure arecurrently in a state of flux, and the networkmust adapt to ensure that informationflows freely and reliably despite theupheaval. That makes change managementa critical component of network provisionin the current climate.

Network change must be managedcarefully, not only to maintain theavailability and performance of existingsystems, but also to ensure thatinvestments in the network areproportional to thedemands of the business.

Unfortunately, years ofpoor networkdocumentation has leftmany organisations unableto manage change in such afashion, as they areunaware of their network’scurrent state. This makes it difficult topredict the impact of any significantchange, and what extra capacity might beneeded to accommodate that change.

When adding a new system that requiresa network connection, IT administrators

will typically use up all the availablenetwork ports and, when they have runout, install some more. But when systemsare retired, they rarely unplug theseconnections from the ports, for fear ofsomething breaking unexpectedly. For thisreason, it is not unusual for 50% of theports in a network to be unused.

To have confidence in their ability tomake changes to the network,organisations therefore need a detailedplan of how it stands.

If this is not available inthe documentation, it can beachieved with networkauditing software orservices. However, that auditis just a snapshot, andmanaging change over timewill require documentationto be improved.

There are tools that can ease thisthrough automation, for example bytracking the changes to IP addresses in thenetwork, but it does not necessarily requireany sophisticated software. An Excelspreadsheet can serve as the system of

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It is not unusual for 50% of the

ports in a networkto be unused

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how to guide: change management

record for a networkas long as it is properlymanaged (oftenthey are not).

SERVICEMANAGEMENTDocumenting the technicalspecifications andconfiguration of a network is anessential component of changemanagement, particularly for day-to-dayoperational changes. But it is not sufficientif transformational changes are to bemanaged with a minimum of businessdisruption, and investment in thosechanges is to be prioritised according to thedemands of the business.

This requires an understanding of howapplications, and therefore businessprocesses, rely on the network. The ideal isa service management approach, wherebythe network infrastructure that supports agiven business service – claimsmanagement at an insurance company, forexample – can be identified.

This allows capacity to be plannedaccording to demand for that service, andinvestments in network uptime and

performance justifiedon the basis of

business outcomes. Again, there are

software and servicesavailable that reveal

the interdependenciesbetween the network

infrastructure and thebusiness applications, processes

and services it supports. But the key is forthese interdependencies to be taken intoaccount when planning significant changesto the network.

Some guidance can be drawn from theITIL service management guidelines. One ofITIL’s recommendations for largeorganisations managing change is toestablish a change advisory board (CAB), apanel of interested parties from within theorganisation who approve or deny plannedchanges to the IT infrastructure based ontheir potential impact to the variousbusiness services.

Appointing a CAB may be overkill forsmaller organisations, but the principle –that network changes must be managedaccording to their impact on businessservices – still holds true.

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