Critical
System Workflow Management
By:
Joe Frohne
Managing complex
information systems across an organization can be a daunting task.
The basic definition of a complex information system is one in which
large collections of interconnected components work together.
Complex systems have many architectural layers and different people
responsible on each layer. Some layers may even have multiple areas
of responsibility. The fundamental layers in most complex systems
include networking, database, application, web combined with
operating system and hardware support, client support and customer
support. When changes affect a complex system, they involve many
people across many departments and the customer base.
Two
current methods exist to assist with managing change. (a) The first
is the change management process. Change management is often the
control mechanism from which proposed changes receive authority.
According to the Gartner group, “Change management investments
should focus on the workflow to establish approval for a change
request.” (b) The other popular process is configuration
management. Configuration management has a primary focus on tracking
infrastructure changes over time. Often, configuration management is
implemented by the use of a configuration management database.
Tracking infrastructure and changes within a database allow for the
following benefits, according to the Gartner group:
- A real-time or near-real-time view of infrastructure components (also known as configuration items) and their dependencies within and across each other.
- Improved risk assessment.
- Improved root cause analysis.
- More reliable change management.
- Facilities service management.
The
two processes of change management and configuration management are
symbiotic yet different. The melding of these two concepts into what
I am calling critical system workflow management and allows for a
hybrid system to authorize and track changes to complex systems
across the organization.
Critical system
workflow management has four key concepts that provide a flexible
framework to track infrastructure changes.
- Community change authorization.
- Transparent communication to stakeholders.
- Automatic workflow for implementing changes.
- Historical infrastructure change tracking.
Traditional
change management has a very rigid control and authority structure.
In my experience, most technologists resist an authoritative control
structure by management. The authorization of changes in critical
system workflow management is dependant on a community of peers,
including managers, being plugged into the system. Since the
technologists are better equipped to police peer changes for
validity, this system provides a better authorization method that
involves a wider group of stakeholders. This fits in with
streamlining work by the use of independent empowered teams.
Communication across
the various stakeholders would be enhanced as it would provide
information to a broad group. The advent of web 2.0 technologies
allow for communities and groups of people to collaborate together.
This type of technology would assist in creating a critical system
workflow management system. It would be tie together the community
and provide transparent communication to all stakeholders, provide an
area for workflow to schedule changes and tie in with a configuration
management database for a historical view of infrastructure changes.
Critical system
workflow is a mechanism that will allow for the management of changes
to complex systems across an organization in a transparent and
holistic way. The empowerment of a community to manage their own
change process without a large amount of management involvement is a
win for empowered teams and a win for over burdened managers. The
success of any change management process, including critical system
workflow, is dependent on (a) sponsorship from senior management and
(b) involvement from the stakeholders in the implementation to garner
a sense of ownership.
