This is the Safari online edition of the printed book.

The Business-Focused, Best-Practice Guide to Succeeding with ITIL Change and Release Management

ITIL® (Information Technology Infrastructure Library®) can help organizations streamline and integrate their operations, dramatically improving efficiency and delivering greater business value. For the first time, there's a comprehensive best-practice guide to succeeding with two of the most crucial and challenging parts of ITIL: change and release management.

Leading IBM® ITIL expert and author Larry Klosterboer shares solid expertise gained from real implementations across multiple industries. He helps you decide where to invest, avoid ITIL pitfalls, and build successful, long-term processes that deliver real return on investment. You’ll find detailed guidance on each process, integrated into a comprehensive roadmap for planning, implementation, and operation—a roadmap available nowhere else.

Klosterboer offers in-depth coverage of the crucial issues every implementer will face, including make-or-break challenges most consultants can’t or won’t talk about. For example, he demonstrates how to set a reasonable project scope, migrate data, execute successful pilot programs, and continually improve quality once ITIL practices are in place.

This book’s practical insights will be invaluable to every IT executive, professional, and user who wants to bring their current change and release practices in line with ITIL—and transform them from a source of frustration into a source of value.

Coverage includes

• Discovering and managing your change and release management requirements

• Identifying the resources you’ll need to succeed

• Building comprehensive schedules for executing change/release management projects

• Moving from planning to real-world implementation

• Choosing the right tools—or modifying the tools you’ve already invested in

• Using change/release management to facilitate auditing and ensure compliance

• Leveraging the full business benefits of mature change/release management processes

Covers ITIL version 3 

Acknowledgments xv

About the Author xvi

Part I: Planning 1

Chapter 1: Change and Release Management: Better Together 3

Chapter 2: Discovering and Managing Requirements 13

Chapter 3: Defining Change and Release Management Processes 27

Chapter 4: Building Logical Work Flows 41

Chapter 5: Completing the Implementation Plan 51

Part II: Implementing 65

Chapter 6: Choosing the Tools 67

Chapter 7: Migrating or Consolidating Data 85

Chapter 8: Bringing the Process to Life 97

Chapter 9: Choosing and Running a Pilot 109

Chapter 10: Moving from Pilot to Production 121

Part III: Operational Issues 133

Chapter 11: The Forward Schedule of Change 135

Chapter 12: Building the Definitive Media Library 143

Chapter 13: Defining Release Packages 153

Chapter 14: Auditing and Compliance Management 163

Part IV: Reaping the Benefits 173

Chapter 15: Business Impact Analysis 175

Chapter 16: Reports and Service Levels 185

Chapter 17: Linking to Other Processes 199

Index 209

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 1 Ratings

An excellent change management book, with one reservation - 2009-02-28
Reviewer Rating:
Larry Klosterboer, author of "Implementing ITIL Change and Release Management" has written the comprehensive overview of managing ITIL based change strategies for IT Operations Managers and Directors.

So why is a psychologist reviewing an IT change management book?

For starters, many of my clients are IT and information systems specialists. Most are going through pain, change and challenges related to keeping up with the rapidly shifting demands of their customers, the adoption of new technology, and of course, the economy.

What makes this book different is it specifically speaks to the change and release methodologies you need to manage these three technology pressures. In particular, this book focuses on issues of Content, (Structure, Strategy, Process, Product) and Roadmap, (Project management, Governance, Implementation, Contingencies). This is both its strength and weakness.

In a recent interview Klosterboer offered these critical words of advice from his book:

5 must-dos

* Engage the organization-- implementing change and release management cannot be done in a corner.
* Establish strong policies so process documents never need to be interpreted on the fly.
* Use tools to automate the process rather than defining a process which fits the tools.
* Train each person for the role they will fill rather than creating generic process training.
* Build reports that people will use.

5 don'ts

* Don't forget to gather and agree on solid requirements before moving on to implementation.
* Don't believe implementation of a tool is the hardest part.
* Don't think you can implement release management without appropriate staffing.
* Don't underestimate the importance of a definitive media library.
* Don't settle for a general, high-level process that nobody really follows.

It's the very first of these, engaging the organization, that is truly critical, and often overlooked or given not enough attention. Engaging people means getting them to devote their time, talent and trust to supporting your goals.

It's also true that the book deals largely with the Organization level of analysis. To be truly comprehensive change managers need to have a strategy to deal with the Group and Individual dynamics that get stirred up by organizational change.

The various chapters in this book work through the content and roadmap you need to lay out for your organization to get on top of change and release management, using the ITIL structures, but don't provide much detail on how to engage the staff and customers. Add in expertise on the People issues, (Mindsets, Reactions, Engagement, Acceptance, Commitment) or supplement it from elsewhere and the book would be perfect.

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