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#1354 CHMG - rename to Change control change request accepted

The latest update of ITIL (ITIL® 4) has changed the name of “Change management” to “Change control". There are some benefits in SFIA doing the same.

This skill has been described in SFIA since SFIA v1.

It was called “Change control” – but was renamed to “Change management” in SFIA v3.

  • At that time - it was renamed to align to terminology used in the IT Service management discipline (specifically in ITIL).

A disadvantage of the name "Change management" is that it is often confused with “organisational change management” – i.e. the skill associated with managing the human side of change

The latest update of ITIL (ITIL® 4) has changed the name of “Change management” to “Change control.

For SFIA 8 – we have an opportunity to rename back to “Change control” which has 2 benefits …

  1. Align to contemporary language in the IT Service management discipline
  2. Remove confusion with organisational change management

Proposed change applies to Change control

Current status of this request: accepted

What we decided

Skill to be renamed for SFIA 8 and content updated where required. Also included in overall readability review for SFIA 8.

Ian Seward (General Manager)
Jan 20, 2021 03:16 PM

Interesting ...

I was going to argue against this on three points:
1. There is more to life than ITIL
2. Managing changes (as opposed to managing the change of the organisational capability) was more than change control.
3. Configuration Management and Change Control were more than just service management or more than delivery and operation ...

As point 3, the two do seem closely linked and so rationalising them in some way, which does suggest CHMG becoming change control, makes sense.

In a previous existence, and nothing to do with ITIL or indeed service management, change control was a crucial engineering discipline and a component of configuration management.

Currently CHMGL2-4 are fairly light, CHMGL5 sounds about right (but perhaps some could come down to L4) but CHMGL6 seems to be there for the sake of it ... and the skill description seems to be trying to make it sound interesting.

CFMG
Probably needs a review and to reference Change Control as a related/component of/complementary skill ...

So this CR does make sense to me now ...

Leah Prevost
Feb 11, 2021 03:45 PM

I welcome this change, pardon the pun, as I'm constantly having the discussion about this not being managing organisational change ...

SFIA Updates Manager
Feb 11, 2021 04:39 PM

Thanks Leah - do you think we need to have a more obvious reference to "organisational change management" (OCM) in SFIA.

I think CIPM covers some but not all of it and we have an existing change request - url below - which suggests we make reference to OCM in ORDI, OCDV and CIPM.

But I wonder whether OCM should be something stand-alone or CIPM enhanced to cover it.

As an aside there is an opportunity to rename Change implementation and management to something shorter - its our longest skill name and causes lots of formatting problems!! If I recall it was only given that name to differentiate it from the Change management in ITIL - and so we come full circle. Part of the fun of SFIA being such a long-lived framework.


https://sfia-online.org/en/sfia-8/change-requests/inclusion-of-organisational-change-management-ocm-aspects-in-ordi-ocdv-and-cipm

Leah Prevost
Feb 11, 2021 05:14 PM

I think it would be great to have more obvious reference to Organisational Change Management - now this one is being renamed and therefore reduces the confusion. Could CIPM be changed to Organisational Change Management perhaps - in terms of enhancement I think that means the emphasis being on the people side of change .

I'll switch over to the other change request and have a look through, will add further comments there.