Personally I am not a great planner. I forget things, miss appointments or book events on already taken time…. and that is even when I am alone, never mind if a whole team is planning changes based on the same resources. So it is important to make sure everybody who’ s involved in planning has a good overview of the free time slots and already planned events.

When we look at the change process we talk over a lot of planning. Planned start and finish times, actual start and finish times and the related work orders also take a spot in the planning process.  Thereby you need to bear in mind that your organization maybe has some freezes or there is a specific National Day, like ‘Koniggchiginnedag’ (1.46).

If your company has a CAB meeting every day, the Change Manager needs to provide a clear overview of the upcoming changes and the impact of then on the organization. All of the points above have one thing in common, if you have a good overview of the events it will make your live a lot easier, it will reduce the planning mistakes and eventually save costs.

So, let’s dive into the options:

1. Send an email every day with a list of changes that are planned in the upcoming few days
2. Teach a pigeon to fly between several floors or buildings and strap a printout of the changes to his tiny legs
3. Use a web based solution that gives, the people you grant access, everyone access to a clear overview of the upcoming changes

The first one is frequently used but requires a lot of “hand” work , has the risks of making simple mistakes with potentially big consequences.

The second one is an option but has at least one big flaw… what if there is a new building, new employee or the location is changes… You need to retrain the pigeon.

And last but not least, or let’s call it the best… a web based solution that provide a lot of users to see all the changes in a pretty, easy to read, interface. When you take the web based solutions and there is a new employee, a new floor or building you simply change the access rights or maybe change the location of the web based application. So instead of training a pigeon to fly a new route change the DNS and the new location is ready to see the changes.

Thereby is the internet always faster than a pidgin… well.. almost always. In South-Africa we advise you to use the pigeon (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8248056.stm).

So, I came to the simple conclusion, use a good looking, intuitive web based Calendar. Just like the Westbury ITSM Calendar. With this solution you can import the data from you Service Management application. Combine it with other sources that contain your Freezes (Holidays, National Days or planned maintenance), or add events yourself. Take advantage of the read only functionality that ensures you that there is  no need for extra licensing or your application because it has its own user administration. And finally create several calendars so you can easily “filter” through your changes by showing, for example, only the High Impact ones

I will not start a marketing talk now over our calendar, I already did that, I just wanted to point out the need of a good, unified way of sharing your planning. Sad but true, I will create a similar calendar for myself to compensate my poorly planning skills. So, think it over, take a look at our Change Calendar (http://westbury-it.com/solutions/change-calendar) and fall in love with it !!

Till next time,

Richard