Change is a risky business and even small changes can induce disproportionate risk, especially if you cannot reverse the change when a problem appears.
Picture credit: Scott Ableman
We may be reasonably good at managing big change and ensure that we have contingency plans to back-out any unsuccessful change, by restoring the status quo ante.
But very often we are not so good at managing the trivial and semi-trivial changes; those tiny little tweaks to our business model and systems that may be effected by individual initiative, rather than a mighty collective decision.
Such changes, like automatically upgrading a minor systems component, are part of Business As Usual – not a carefully planned Change Programme. And so they happen many times a week, usually without any problems. We don’t sweat the small stuff.
But every now and then, a glitch with one of these small changes causes a major problem, either through a simple fault in the changed component, or through an unexpected consequence of the change.
When this happens you may be able to restore the previous version of the component and roll-back the change and carry on as if nothing had happened. Providing, of course, that you have an effective roll-back mechanism for your Business As Usual state.
Are you sure that your organization can roll-back the small tweak problems, before your business rolls over in convulsions?
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