An analysis of the success factors in implementing an ITIL-based IT Change and Release Management Application

Master's Thesis from the year 2012 in the subject Computer Science - Commercial Information Technology, grade: 68 von 70 (ca. 1,3), University of East London, course: Informatik - Wirtschaftsinformatik, BWL, ITIL, language: English, abstract: To ensure the quality of the IT environment for the future the majority of IT managers followed a strategy to introduce an IT change and release management application in the past few years. The present thesis researches if the implementations of the given success factors are leading to a successful implementation of a workflow-based IT change and release management application and will moreover find further success factors. This is done with help of five hypothesises. The five hypothesises are based on the HR change management issues, on the ITIL® reference model and on general process issues. The HR change management offers with the eight step model of Kotter critical success factor for changes in the business. Publications of Kotter are used to illustrate that the described success factors lead to successful HR change implementation. The ITIL® reference model defines critical success factors for a successful IT change and release management implementation and are used for a research for the effectiveness of this model. The ITIL® reference model and process issues publications of the official ITIL® source and literature of Laudon & Laudon are used for the present thesis. In addition other researchers in this field are important mentioned as well. Subsequent to that, the findings were integrated into the questionnaire and the interviews and used as well get an initial assessment. The mixture of the qualitative and quantitative approaches uses the strengths of both methods. The given answers strongly depend on the respondent's point of view. It becomes clear that a successful implementation of an IT change and release management application comes not only from the implementation of the HR change management issues but also from the implementation of the IT issues. The combination of HR and IT issues with their specialised success factors is the best way to gain a successful IT change and release management implementation. But the research discovered further improvements and optimisations which mainly deal with redesigned processes. The process redesigns based on modification on the ITIL® reference model to optimise the IT change process. The optimisations include a skip of the formal RfC request form to shorten the whole process-chain during the application of an IT change. Furthermore an implementation of a key technical employee should be deploy to authorise the IT change instead of an authorisation of the central positioned change manager.