June 2, 2018 · Resources

Change Management with Small Teams

I work with a small, tight group inside a much larger institution, but we have a lot of control over our environment and how we choose to operate.

One of the most difficult challenges in a small IT organization that I've noticed so far is trying to get a grasp on changes and their impact. You'd think that with a small team, everything is transparent, right?

Well, you'd be partially right. Inside a small team, small, incremental changes to systems and processes are the norm, and it's hard to know when you need to talk about them with the whole team.

Does Emily need to know about the small change Rachel made to DHCP yesterday, if it shouldn't impact her work as a desktop support tech?

The answer is, usually, maybe.

Even if we think our changes won't have a big impact, it's possible that they will make a difference in time, and it turns in to a "well-it-would-have-been-nice-to-know-that earlier, Rachel..."

I'm grateful that my boss recognizes this difficult challenge and tries to mitigate it with weekly change managment meetings, where we dump items we're working on that other team members might need to know about in a Slack channel, and then try to talk at a high level about our direction and scope for the week.

This often leads to offshoot meetings & sync-ups later that help keep everyone informed and happy (well, most of the time).

Hopefully this helps out someone in one of those small IT teams. Best of luck keeping up!