Core business Borland
“Improving the Software Delivery Process Through Open ALM” (“Improving the Software…”) This company helps (global) IT organisations to change their software delivery into a controlled, well-organised, and predictable business process. They can manage this by a mix of technology and services. They offer complete ALM solutions, ‘ALM’ stands for Application Lifecycle Management. Their main aim is to guarantee their customers through these ALM solutions the best practices and continuously improvements of their software delivery processes. Borland provides these services to global companies for more than 20 years now.
Change management plays an important role when facing changes in the needs of the business. A quick respond to these changes increases the organisation’s business alertness which will have important advantages in the fast changing business world of today.
Borland’s software teams can control and organize these changes by an application lifecycle as shown below. These teams are specialised in decreasing inefficient and costly communication and overall ineffectiveness. Focusing on critical processes these specialised teams can improve certainty, efficiency and visibility and therefore an increased control over the complete software delivery process. (Improving the software…)
1) The external change, problems and opportunities
Company A was facing a complex problem with managing the “constant stream of defects” and development desires on their software delivery projects.
This company trained their employees to use standard changing processes for their project portfolio which was automatically installed with the use of an industry-leading change tracking and service management product.
It is clear that this company invested a huge amount of human en financial resources to solve their change management problems which would lead to major and considerable results. (“Partial Solutions…)
2) Recognition of the need for change
Even though Company A put so much effort on this changing process they still faced huge costs and a lack of time. Project managers kept complaining that they could not understand the effect of changes when measuring actual performance against plan and modified plans. Next to that, other project employees stated that they were not able to work effectively when taking into account the accepted changes.
To understand the reason of these failures, important is to look at the overall approach that company A applied to manage software delivery. In this case, the three important processes involved in change management – project and portfolio management, asset management, and change management – were functioning separately rather than as part of an overall process.
Company A was doing a good job with change management on a project by project basis, but next to that it did not make a clear link with the asset(s) being changed.
They also did not make connections to the project and portfolio management processes for managing change and task implementation.
Known by now is that they had dual problems to cope with. First, the amount of work which was done on projects, which affects most of the time project assets, had no connection to the processes determined on preserving project control and visibility.
“Project management is about planning, managing, and overseeing the work required to complete the project. Change management is about managing the impact of change to project assets and thus outcomes.” (“Managing Change…”)
This means that these two processes are have to be linked so that for example the activities performed as a result of a change request is easily visible and controlled as part of the project plan.
Second, there need to be a connection between changes to assets, the activities and the need for changes. Otherwise, if not, the management faces a loss of control and visibility in general.
3) Start of change process
There are not so many solutions for solving the problems which company A was facing. It was clear for them that changes must be made in such a way that all the work of the project is managed in an integrated manner. To arrive to that point, they should integrate assets, changes, and project- and portfolio management. To illustrate this, they should include all the activities which are part of the original plan and all the activities which are the result of re-planning when changes were made. This is called the ‘integrated approach’ and it characterizes a major difference from the usual view of the project, change, and asset management.
Company A knew what had to be done to successfully change their strategy to create a more integrated change management. Firstly, all the activities performed on project assets should be linked to the planned activities and the project structure. Secondly, the need for changes, regardless of the source or reason, should be managed in a adequate way. Therefore project plans should be updated accordingly and there should be regular evaluations about the development of the existing plan. “Change management should be seen as a process for managing all changes to the project, including assets and its outcomes.” (“Solving the Problem…”)
4) Diagnosis
Review the present state
As discussed before Company A was doing a good job with change management on a project by project basis. Their weak point was that it did not make a clear link to the asset(s) being changed. Furthermore they did not make connections to the project and portfolio management processes for managing change and task implementation.
In this case the three important processes involved are; project and portfolio management, asset management, and change management, which were functioning separately.
So there need to be a connection between changes to assets and the activities relative to the need for changes, otherwise the management faces a loss of control and visibility in general.
Identify future state
Company A is heading towards a business culture where the request for change is easily dealt with. The request will be judged within a short period of time, and when the request is approved it will be implemented under strict supervision of a change control board. The board will be responsible for deciding whether a request will be rejected or approved, they will monitor the process, and they will be reported by the managers handling the change.
For the second part of the problem, Company A has to create a business structure where asset management is implemented in the daily activities of the company so they will be controlled and managed very carefully. This is again closely monitored by the change management board.
The changes which will have to be made in the portfolio management lies for one part in the ‘hands’ of the portfolio management in cooperation with the project management. For the other part the change control board will be responsible.
By implementing these changes the company A will accomplish more efficiency and will prevent itself for making the effort and making mistakes more than once.
5) Plan and prepare for implementation
Company A prepared for their changes by strict planning because they believe that “failing to plan is planning to fail”.
Company A used a four step model to plan their change:
- Identify stakeholders and clarify every task, responsibility, and role of all the people involved in the change process. After doing this less mistakes will occur.
- Specify the change management requirements, know where the request come from and identify them per type of change request so that there will be a clear overview.
- Design a change management process, gather all the information which is needed or used in the change process. When gathering and defining all this data very accurate it will help to have a very clear overview about where the company is in the change management process and how it is working. Furthermore, flows in the process can be detected in an early stage.
- Create a change control board, this board will monitor and direct all the requested changes in the right direction keeping the general interest for the company in mind. (optimize planning…)
6) Implement change
First of all, since everyday businesses have to cope with shrinking teams and timelines it is hard to implement the changes which are needed to survive. This is also the case for Company A because a culture need to be created where the need for change within the company is understandable and highly appreciated. If the team does not understand this it is important that the they are informed and educated about the need for change and also how to manage the changes when they are implemented.
Company A gave their team a “process and supporting tool automation” for backing up their change process. (“Integrating change….”)
Next to this, company A started at the very basis with questions like: ‘where does the request for change come from?’ and ‘how to manage these requests?’. They made a distinction between two different kinds of requests; high level changes (business requirements) and low level changes (functional requirements). The change control board is reviewing all the requests for change and had to make a decision whether to accept or reject a request within two weeks which will force the board to work quick and efficient. Once the request is accepted the project manager has to create a list of daily activities within the company which have to be changed in order to meet the change criteria. The new tasks will be dedicated to resources with the correct availability and skills.
During this stage the whole process is monitored, reviewed and reported on. (“optimize request management…”)
To optimize their asset management the changes they will have to make will be implemented as followed. First, they will start with centralising the storage and labelling all the files. Which makes it very easy to find the files. Second, they are going to use a new software program which will automatically make links between assets, allowing Company A perform real-time impact analysis and send announcements. (“optimize asset…)
For the last process, the project and portfolio management it is essential that the flow of information and need for changes are collected, organised and linked with each other. In this matter an overview of the complete portfolio is created instead of project by project. To accomplish this, changes in the project management have to be made. When project management decides that new tasks have to be implemented in the process or old tasks have to be removed or changed, they need to make sure that this information is passed on to the portfolio management. They have to organise all these changes and link them with each other. This same routine need to be followed when dealing with resource assignments, work estimations, actual process updates, and metrics like defect rates and state aging. This will make company A more effective and it will prevent them from making the same mistake twice. These steps will also be monitored by the change control board.
When problems occur they will be noticed in an early stage and therefore also dealt with in a early stage.(“Integrate portfolio…”)
7) Review and consolidation
As mentioned in the previous chapter, during the whole process of change every step is closely monitored and reviewed by the change control board. When problems seem to occur the change control board will take immediate action to protect the company from failing. Since the change control board will monitor every step, the problems will be detected in a early stage.
By this way of working these beginner problems will not lead to big problems within the change management process.
When company A is finished implementing all these changes it will have accomplished more efficiency and they will prevent themselves for making the effort and making mistakes more than once.
However, company A has to keep in mind that changes will never stop and while implementing the changes discussed in the report, the need for other changes already arise.
Work Cited List
Anon. Improving the Software Delivery Process Through Open ALM. Borland Software Corporation. 6 October 2007. <>
Anon Integrate portfolio demand and project change request. Borland Software Corporation. 2 October 2007. <>
Anon. Integrating Change Management with project and portfolio management. Borland Software Corporation. 2 October 2007. <>
Anon. Managing Change For Competitive Advantage, White Paper July 2007. Borland Software Corporation. 2 October 2007. <>
Anon. Optimize request management. Borland Software Corporation. 2 October 2007. <>
Anon. Optimize asset management. Borland Software Corporation. 2 October 2007. <>
Anon. Partial Solutions Are Not Enough. Borland Software Corporation. 2 October 2007. <>
Anon. Solving the Problem by Integrating Project, Change, and Asset Management. Borland Software Corporation. 2 October 2007. <>
Hayes, John. The Theory and Practice of Change Management. Palgrave, 2002. 25 September 2007.
