Cloud Management - Deploying and Managing a Cloud Infrastructure - page 101

on the hands of the IT staff. We say mostly because not everything is certain, even in
large systematic organizations. That is the reason companies that have been around for
hundreds of years still go bankrupt. But the response to that change can be managed,
and it can mean the difference between thriving and failing in the business environment.
Change is inherent in any organization. All organizations must at some point undergo
change in order to stay relevant or get ahead. Figure 4.4 is a simple visualization of what
you can expect from change management that summarizes it quite efficiently.

FIGURE 4.4 Change management

Measure

Strategy

Improve

Change
Management

Organize Teamwork

Motivate

There are two sources of change, external and internal.
External Sources External sources include the changing state of the market, technology,
trends, customer influence, and political and economic issues.
Internal Sources Or change can come from within, such as for executive decisions in
response to changing client needs, costs, human resource, or performance issues.
But in true essence, most if not all changes are due to external factors or sources or as
a reaction thereof. Rarely will management decide something from out of nowhere with-
out merit; all decisions are influenced by external factors in one way or another. There's
a decision to downsize on costs? It's not simply your manager's initiative; it's because the
market is predicted to go down, for example. But whether change is driven by external
factors or not is not the issue. The issue is that no matter where it is coming from, it can
affect a small portion of or the entire organization. You can never be fully prepared for
change, but at least you can manage it.
In the IT environment, starting from the design to the implementation phase, we try to
make changes in the least impactful ways possible. Change management is a collection of
policies and procedures that are meant to minimize system downtime by ensuring that all
changes are recorded, evaluated, planned, tested, documented, implemented, and finally
reviewed using a controlled and consistent process. Regardless of the origin of the change,
change management is the important process of taking a structured and planned approach
to align the organization to whatever changes needs to happen. In essence, change manage-
ment involves working with the stakeholders directly affected by the change and helping
them to understand what it means for them, to handle the transition, and to overcome any
challenges that result.