I used to think that change management was something you did for the auditors. I now realize that my attitude was undermining the value and that Change Management is the most important control in an IT department.
Kevin Behr (kevinbehr.com) opened my eyes. In Visible Ops Behr, et. al. state that 80% of all IT problems are the result of something we changed (shooting ourselves in the foot). Creating a culture that values successful changes and backs out bad changes rather then “fixing” the problem creates a more efficient IT organization.
I could continue plagiarizing from Visible Ops, but this note from our Exchange guru says it all:
Change management saves the day and my vacation! I have been working on a pesky issue today that I thought was limited to one resource mailbox but turned out to affect other mailboxes of that type. While working closely with the impacted users we were able to determine the problem started last week. I reviewed my changes from that time frame and there it was! A minor change made to correct one issue caused another issue. Before finding that change documentation I was worried there was a larger issue going on that would require resolution before I could leave for vacation. Long story short, issue resolved. The extra time taken to document changes pays off big time and I’m outta here! Have a great 4th of July.
Candid CIO 
Great story. As in most things, change management is about finding the balance between a useful audit trail and a cumbersome process that inhibits progress.
Configuration management is a wonderful thing. Just buy yourself a TimeCapsule (if you have a Mac) and see how your attitude changes. It’s not just for backups: I’ve used it to retrieve a specific version (date/time) of a document when something was in dispute. The old VMS file versioning had a similar effect.
The trick is to make configuration management invisible: it’s just something that happens in the background.
r.
PEG