Apa for Ben Teehankee

Kim Alexis Mirasol

11494972
BUS530M GM 91 AY_2015_2016_T2

Submitted to Dr. Ben Teehankee

1. Select an issue or problem that you have worked on in your team (or are working on).  

In our team, we deal a lot of changes in the IT infrastructure to meet the standards that will get the continuous support of the vendors and the service that the business requires. Before the changes get implemented, they have to be approved by the owners of the assets impacted (i.e. software licenses, servers, etc.). Since the changes are usually performed during weekends or outside of business hours to minimize service disruptions, we plan ahead and chase all the necessary approvals before the weekend. Imagine all of us chasing on a Friday.

We worked with the change managers (i.e. the team who monitors the changes within our IT infrastructure), and devised a way to document all what the approvers need before they sign-off and how long is the expected time from each approver group to approve of the change request.

1. What is the context of this issue? Why is it important? What are the stakes involved?  

We found out that most of us start chasing approvals almost a month before the schedule of the change so that we can avoid chasing approvals the day before the change. By doing this, we thought we could put more time into finalizing our plans. However, it looks like even we’ve sought approval way ahead of time, we still find ourselves picking up the phone and having the approvers send their approvals via e-mail for documentation with the just the word “approved”.  For instance, two weeks before my change request, I’ve sought for the approvals required. The only thing that the approvers need to do is to review the change request, and reply “approved” if all are suitable for them and if not, they can ask for more details. None of them replies at first since time is needed for them to review. 3-5 days passed and no one answers, given that a reminder is sent everyday. Eventually, calling them one-by-one gets them to respond but some will still need to get back to your e-mail. As change approvers, they need to set and disseminate their service level agreement so that the change requestors would understand clearly how they are reviewing the changes.  

It is relevant, not only for our team, but for other teams as well because the success of our projects depends on these changes as they actually contribute to the efficiency of the organization’s technology. If we have a more efficient approval system, then we can save time and focus on other tasks and projects.

1. Describe how the issue was constructed. How did you decide that an intervention was needed or wanted, what was wrong, what the causes were? How did you deal with different meanings or constructions in the team?  

The issue came from a dilemma wherein all approvers were on leave on a Friday, before the day of the implementation of the change. A lot of stakeholders were aware of this change and expecting it to be completed by the following week. It was a challenge contacting them and had to come to HR just to get their personal contact details. At the end of the day, the change was still approved to be implemented the next day. Even with that said, an approver claimed that the change request should be submitted at least 3 days before the implementation. Actually, the change was raised two weeks before and a reminder was sent everyday. For some approvals, there’s only one person assigned as an approver and we suggested that there must be a back up approver incase one of them was out of the office. Also, it would help if each approver can provide us with the expected times of delivery so that it would be clear to the requestors on when they should raise their change requests.