DevOps.com

  • Latest
    • Articles
    • Features
    • Most Read
    • News
    • News Releases
  • Topics
    • AI
    • Continuous Delivery
    • Continuous Testing
    • Cloud
    • Culture
    • DevSecOps
    • Enterprise DevOps
    • Leadership Suite
    • DevOps Practice
    • ROELBOB
    • DevOps Toolbox
    • IT as Code
  • Videos/Podcasts
    • DevOps Chats
    • DevOps Unbound
  • Webinars
    • Upcoming
    • On-Demand Webinars
  • Library
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • On-Demand Events
  • Sponsored Communities
    • AWS Community Hub
    • CloudBees
    • IT as Code
    • Rocket on DevOps.com
    • Traceable on DevOps.com
    • Quali on DevOps.com
  • Related Sites
    • Techstrong Group
    • Container Journal
    • Security Boulevard
    • Techstrong Research
    • DevOps Chat
    • DevOps Dozen
    • DevOps TV
    • Digital Anarchist
  • Media Kit
  • About
  • AI
  • Cloud
  • Continuous Delivery
  • Continuous Testing
  • DevSecOps
  • Leadership Suite
  • Practices
  • ROELBOB
  • Low-Code/No-Code
  • IT as Code
  • More
    • Application Performance Management/Monitoring
    • Culture
    • Enterprise DevOps

Home » Blogs » Enterprise DevOps » Change Management & Continuous Delivery: Clash or Harmony?

Change Management & Continuous Delivery: Clash or Harmony?

By: contributor on January 21, 2015 4 Comments

Introducing changes into running software systems is risky. There’s always a chance of failure, and that can have a negative impact on your business. It’s important to mitigate that risk, but there’s more than one way to do so.

Recent Posts By contributor
  • How to Ensure DevOps Success in a Distributed Network Environment
  • Dissecting the Role of QA Engineers and Developers in Functional Testing
  • DevOps Primer: Using Vagrant with AWS
More from contributor
Related Posts
  • Change Management & Continuous Delivery: Clash or Harmony?
  • “I want to do Continuous Deployment”
  • CDF Report Surfaces DevOps Workflow Gains
    Related Categories
  • Blogs
  • Enterprise DevOps
    Related Topics
  • change management
  • continuous delivery
  • xebia labs
Show more
Show less

Change Management is all about ensuring that changes to existing systems and software in production are done in a controlled way. Change managers review the changes that are to be implemented, assess their impact, and perform due diligence, before giving or withholding their approval.

DevOps Connect:DevSecOps @ RSAC 2022

Continuous Delivery (CD) is about improving the process of delivering software and increasing efficiency. It aims to cut down the time between ideation and realization. It’s about reducing the scope for error and increasing the speed to market to generate a competitive advantage.

Is there an inevitable clash between CM and CD? Are they really compatible? At heart, the CD pipeline is intended to achieve the same thing as CM by enabling the smooth, error-free roll-out of changes, but today they are usually coming from very different angles.

If CM is to have a future in the CD revolution, then it needs to change. Before we discuss how that might be achieved, let’s take a look at the current state of play 

Is Change Management delivering?

Ask yourself what impact change management is having on your organization. If change management was working perfectly then there wouldn’t be any production problems, and yet issues still crop up. There are a few things to consider:

  1. How many entries in the CM checklist could be automated? Is the change manager doing anything that really requires human input? Fact collection and verification could be a part of your CD pipeline.
  2. How much value do check boxes deliver in the first place? What is change management really bringing to the table?
  3. Is the process fit for purpose? Does it actually prevent problems, or is the change manager really just a fall guy, there to sign off on the release and take the blame if something goes wrong?

Clashing with Continuous Delivery

CM is intimately linked with the idea and practice of big complicated transformations, but with CD we’re not talking about enormous, disruptive changes. CD is about changing small parts of a system and doing it often. The risk to reward ratio is different when you think and work iteratively. Smaller change sets are less likely to cause problems and easier to rollback when they do.

Does the process really require human input? Heavyweight validation will slow it down and speed is one of the key benefits Continuous Delivery offers. Streamlining and automating the checklist process makes perfect sense in many business contexts. The aims of CM and CD are in sync, but CD is better placed to deliver.

A possible advantage of traditional CM is the presence of a human eye, offering intuition that a machine or a piece of software may not be capable of. By moving beyond the checklists and reimagining the CM role we can retain this advantage and push CD forward.

From Gatekeepers to Masters of Continuous Delivery

If the bulk of CM is really an administrative exercise in checking boxes then it could be an unnecessary overhead, but there is a way to retain that human oversight for organizations wary of full automation. Why not ask the former gatekeeper to own the CD process? For a CD pipeline to be truly effective someone has to guide the process, engage with all the teams involved and understand exactly why and how the process generates business value.

A change manager, paired with a build or release engineer to handle the automation, could work to help organizations move towards CD. They are uniquely well placed to identify dependencies, map processes, and help construct the CD pipeline with minimal disruption. They can help sketch out what the pipeline should verify, what data and dependencies need to be taken into account, what automated tests are required, and how it fits with other components to automate that release procedure. They also have experience mediating between business and IT.

The traditional CM approach of committee meetings and spreadsheet checklists is dated, and for many organizations it no longer makes sense. You can find much greater business value in focusing on an efficient rollback procedure that kicks in immediately and automatically when changes fail.

Take a look at your CM and ask yourself – is it really adding anything to the process, or is it just another bottleneck? It may be time for a change.


About the Author/Andrew Phillips

andrew_PhillipsAndrew Phillips heads up product management at XebiaLabs. Andrew is an evangelist and thought leader in the DevOps, Cloud and Continuous Delivery space. He sits on the management team and drives product direction, positioning and planning.

Filed Under: Blogs, Enterprise DevOps Tagged With: change management, continuous delivery, xebia labs

Sponsored Content
Featured eBook
The 101 of Continuous Software Delivery

The 101 of Continuous Software Delivery

Now, more than ever, companies who rapidly react to changing market conditions and customer behavior will have a competitive edge.  Innovation-driven response is successful not only when a company has new ideas, but also when the software needed to implement them is delivered quickly. Companies who have weathered recent events ... Read More
« There is No ‘I’ in Team: Transitioning Engineering Teams into a DevOps Model
Why DevOps is like fitness or religion »

TechStrong TV – Live

Click full-screen to enable volume control
Watch latest episodes and shows

Upcoming Webinars

Deploying Microservices With Pulumi & AWS Lambda
Tuesday, June 28, 2022 - 3:00 pm EDT
Boost Your Java/JavaScript Skills With a Multi-Experience Platform
Wednesday, June 29, 2022 - 3:30 pm EDT
Closing the Gap: Reducing Enterprise AppSec Risks Without Disrupting Deadlines
Thursday, June 30, 2022 - 11:00 am EDT

Latest from DevOps.com

Chip-to-Cloud IoT: A Step Toward Web3
June 28, 2022 | Nahla Davies
DevOps Connect: DevSecOps — Building a Modern Cybersecurity Practice
June 27, 2022 | Veronica Haggar
What Is User Acceptance Testing and Why Is it so Important?
June 27, 2022 | Ron Stefanski
Developer’s Guide to Web Application Security
June 24, 2022 | Anas Baig
Cloudflare Outage Outrage | Yet More FAA 5G Stupidity
June 23, 2022 | Richi Jennings

Get The Top Stories of the Week

  • View DevOps.com Privacy Policy
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Download Free eBook

The Automated Enterprise
The Automated Enterprise

Most Read on DevOps.com

Four Steps to Avoiding a Cloud Cost Incident
June 22, 2022 | Asim Razzaq
The Age of Software Supply Chain Disruption
June 23, 2022 | Bill Doerrfeld
At Some Point, We’ve Shifted Too Far Left
June 22, 2022 | Don Macvittie
Cloudflare Outage Outrage | Yet More FAA 5G Stupidity
June 23, 2022 | Richi Jennings
Developer’s Guide to Web Application Security
June 24, 2022 | Anas Baig

On-Demand Webinars

DevOps.com Webinar ReplaysDevOps.com Webinar Replays
  • Home
  • About DevOps.com
  • Meet our Authors
  • Write for DevOps.com
  • Media Kit
  • Sponsor Info
  • Copyright
  • TOS
  • Privacy Policy

Powered by Techstrong Group, Inc.

© 2022 ·Techstrong Group, Inc.All rights reserved.