Do upgrades to your corporate systems happen because of deliberate
reflection and defined testing, or do changes get introduced “on-the-fly?” The
latter is more common that we all care to admit, but it can be a costly way to
do business when an untested change causes an entire system to behave in
unexpected ways--sometimes things even cease to operate.
The value of the productive hours
lost is part of the real cost of poorly-implemented changes to systems, so make sure that all changes are planned, approved, tested, and
documented, along with some form of a back-out strategy. You never know... things don't always work out quite the way we expect, now do they?
Consider forming a Change Management Committee and make sure that senior
members (who might be construed as stake-holders) from across your organization
participate in its activities.
Finally, communicate, communicate, communicate: Make sure that
everyone who needs to know about an upcoming change actually gets the memo.
Surprises can get ugly.
