February 6, 2025
IpX Executive Director True North Calibration
Determining if a Change Request is to be managed as a full or fast-track change is about making quality business decisions. It’s also about managing key stakeholders and engaging the right decision makers. And for full-track changes – those that require formal review and approval by the Change Review Board (CRB), it is an opportunity for visibility with leaders across the organization to drive alignment and awareness – both vertically and horizontally, of what is most important to the business at a strategic level. Remember, organizational leaders often regard surprises as a bad thing!
Of course, not all changes are created equal – hence the need for fast and full-track processes. At one end of the spectrum, some changes are “no-brainers” and have a relatively limited impact to the business. Clerical changes are an extreme example – updating product documentation to correct an error or add clarity for instance. These are changes that clearly need to be completed and treating them as fast-track is appropriate: convening the CRB would be a poor use of resources and demonstrate poor stakeholder management.
But of course, businesses deal with Change Requests on the other end of the spectrum as well – changes that do indeed warrant review and approval by key stakeholders and leaders from around the organization. Often CRB review is warranted because the business decision is far from a “no-brainer”. Perhaps the change carries significant financial or technical risk. Alternatively, as most organizations are resource-constrained and carry many more opportunities in their portfolio of opportunities than they can reasonably progress, they must choose carefully how they prioritize their resources. And many changes are not optional – regulatory or customer-driven changes are common examples. In these instances, the role of the CRB may be to decide what other priorities must be deferred.
Determining full or fast-track can be a matter of perspective. The best thing to do to drive alignment among stakeholders across the organization is to document and propose the criteria for determining CRB engagement and seek feedback. Recognize the “right answer” may be a bit of a moving target – think of the agreed criteria as a guideline rather than a set of hard rules. It is the responsibility of the Change Leader and team members to minimize surprises. When in doubt, err on the side of over-communicating. Finally, take the opportunity to review and test the agreed criteria in a CRB setting periodically.
The following table may provide a useful starting point for identifying the right criteria for your organization.
Ultimately, the fast versus full-track decision is about finding the right level of leadership and stakeholder engagement and oversight required given the level of complexity, risk, and impact documented in the subject Change Request. Take the opportunity to learn how the proposed change impacts various functions and consider if leaders and stakeholders need to be engaged.
Michael Benning, Executive Director of True North Calibration, brings over 25 years of experience in various project and operations management roles in the oil and gas and manufacturing sectors. Prior to joining IpX, Michael was the Director of Program Management and was tasked with establishing a Change & Configuration Management competence based on CM2 principles at a tier-1 automotive manufacturer. This global competency included 2 Change Leaders, 1 Change Implementation Leader, 2 Audit Release Analysts, a Director of Change Management, and had direct oversight to the CAD services team. In addition to rationalizing existing product portfolios, and integrating CM2 principles with legacy engineering and operations processes, the team implemented a configurator platform.
