Business-Driven Decision Support for Change Management: Planning and Scheduling of Changes

From the results of a web survey we carried out in 2006, the main challenge in IT change management from a change manager’s perspective was identified as planning and scheduling of changes. This paper begins to address this problem by taking business considerations into account; this is done through a business-driven IT management (BDIM) approach. A reference architecture that follows BDIM principles is sketched; it includes a mathematical model linking IT availability metrics to business objectives. Monetary loss due to service level violations on service availability is used as the main business metric. We present a numerical illustration of how the derived metrics may support change management decisions in order to plan and schedule changes to minimize adverse business impact.