Software Change Management Industrial Case Study: Utility Moving to the Clouds

  • 12/22/2011

Summary

This chapter provides insight into large procurements for Information Technology (IT) products and services. The major issues in this case revolve around addressing resistance to change brought on by a changeover to a new computing paradigm—for example, cloud computing. In this case, such resistance should have been anticipated and dealt with earlier in the process. The team should have gotten IS personnel involved earlier and solicited their inputs and resolved their objections prior to making the recommendation for one of the change options. In the process, they would have learned about and been able to attack the issues of reliability and placement of staff. Instead, they became involved in a war of words that detracted from the goal of the effort, which was determining whether or not cloud computing made sense for this utility company.

This is another chapter where I cut back on materials to save space and maintain a focus. Please understand that cloud computing is controversial and has many issues associated with it that deserve further coverage. For example, the performance of the cloud is overstated—that is, the vendor often promises more performance at a lower cost than it can deliver. As another example, the tools you use may or may not work as advertised on the cloud. Be warned that you need to move carefully to the clouds because they are still in their early-adopter period.