Minimising the Risks Associated with Change

Announcing the itSMF UK’s second Change, Configuration and Release Management Seminar on 14th June 2012 in London

itSMF UK, the UK’s largest service management user group, is pleased to announce the next event in its 2012 UK Seminar series. Change, Configuration and Release Management is targeted at service managers who want to ensure that changes are successfully released into the live environment with minimal risk.

The seminar takes place on 14th June 2012 from 9.00 to 16.00 at The Mermaid Conference & Events Centre, and is sponsored by LANDesk, a leading service, asset and process management solutions provider. Key speakers on the day include Mal Young from the Land Registry, who discusses the creation of a culture of excellence in a high performance organisation; and Richard Hawthorn from HM Revenue and Customs who talks about the implementation of successful changes in a complex environment. Steve Jones from Aviva explains how to design, implement and maintain an accurate, effective configuration management database; and independent consultant Caspar Braithwaite describes the journey from configuration management to knowledge excellence.

ITIL advises that an effective configuration management system is fundamental to operating IT service management, yet only a small percentage of organisations claim to have one. Why is this? Deploying new releases and making changes to IT services and technology is a regular activity, so organisations should be able to do this efficiently and effectively; but the biggest cause of disruption to users is the implementation of changes and releases. This seminar will help attendees to put effective risk assessments, configuration tools, change and release policies, processes and procedures in place to help avoid major disruptions to the business.

Martin Neville, CTO and Head of Service Management at the Audit Commission and a member of itSMF UK’s Events Committee, commented on the seminar:

“IT departments are constantly working to keep up with the pace of change. But this is not without risk: most incidents are caused by a change to the live environment. Balancing the need for change with the need for stability is one of the biggest challenges facing IT departments today. Good change, release and configuration practice and procedures help reduce the risks.”