Change...

Change has the power to transform companies, for better or for worse. And with today’s enterprise so heavily reliant on software and technology systems, IT is often the determining factor in whether change will ultimately benefit the business—or not.

For organizations that can successfully harness change, the rewards can be significant; one independent study suggests that profits can be as much as 20 percent higher in companies with effective IT processes. Yet in this era of enterprise complexity, regulatory mandates, and constrained resources, change remains both a struggle and a risk. This is because changes are often undertaken as tactical activities within isolated silos, rather than as strategic initiatives integrated across the enterprise.

 
Evolution of change response — reacting to change is costly; controlling change is profitable.

 
To remove the risks and realize the benefits, Serena has developed a new approach for controlling change: the Change Governance™ approach. Change Governance bridges enterprise silos and enables IT and business to continuously manage change events through a shared, transparent, and process-driven framework. It is both comprehensive in scope—spanning roles, sites, technologies, and platforms across the entire enterprise—and flexible enough to scale and integrate easily with existing infrastructure and tools. And with a Change Governance approach, IT departments deliver more than technical expertise; they help businesses transform change from a problem into a strategic advantage.

Learn more »

IT departments are well aware that changes in the business environment—whether driven by compliance mandates, emerging business opportunities, or a company’s internal requirements—frequently result in requests for changes to existing applications. This is a massive task, fraught with risks. In implementing the desired changes, IT teams have to ensure application integrity while keeping highly complex, decentralized, and interdependent systems running—sometimes with a fraction of the time or resources the job requires.

Only state-of-the art process-centric solutions can help IT keep pace with these demands. Serena’s Change Governance™ solutions for application lifecycle management (ALM) offer best-of-breed functionality and unique breadth. They enable project teams to bridge multiple platforms, locations, and technologies within an integrated Change Governance framework. These solutions address change on an enterprise level by supporting the entire application lifecycle for both mainframe and distributed development. They are also highly scalable and flexible, seamlessly integrating outsourced and “offshored” development, as well as best-in-class third-party tools, all of which have long since become standard fixtures in large-scale development projects.  

 
Serena’s Change Governance solutions for ALM deliver what today’s users demand

The ultimate aim of application change is not merely to avoid costly cycles, bugs, or reworks. It is to deliver a product to the business that creates efficiencies and drives increased profitability. Serena’s solutions integrate business user requirements into the change process, enabling full traceability throughout the lifecycle.

Learn more »

The scope and quality of a company’s processes directly impact the quality of its products, services, and, ultimately, its success.

The size and complexity of today’s enterprise, and the growing number and pace of external and internal change events, pose major challenges. Companies that lack a comprehensive process-based strategy for dealing with change, or that rely on legacy approaches and tools that serve only isolated parts of the business, risk compounding the disruptive impacts of change. Today’s conditions can be mastered only with collaboration on an enterprise-wide basis, and with visible, enforceable, and traceable workflows.

Process is at the core of Serena’s Change Governance™ approach. Just as Six Sigma, TQM, supply chain optimization, and other processes are used to ensure best outcomes for the business, Serena Change Governance solutions enable IT to develop, implement, and enforce processes to bring the highest levels of quality and consistency to application development and IT operations. Whether the goal is to track and manage issues and defects to software projects or hardware systems, roll out a new technology, enable global collaboration, or meet regulatory mandates, Change Governance solutions ensure control over every step of the initiative. With Serena solutions, companies are able to: Integrate and automate process workflows across enterprise roles, business units, technologies, and geographies. Drive adoption of a company’s change policies and best practices, such as CMMi, ITIL, and COBIT. Ensure compliance with regulatory mandates, such as Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, and Basel II. Create tighter alignment between business and IT.

As a result, companies can increase productivity and efficiency, shorten development and implementation timeframes, lower costs, improve quality, and ensure consistent, auditable outcomes.

Learn more »

The day has arrived for IT to help lead the business rather than just support it. CIOs are increasingly expected to drive innovation and demonstrate how IT can deliver greater value to the business. The challenge is how to cut costs and do more with less, all while ensuring that IT consistently delivers superior results. Serena’s Change Governance™ solutions provide CIOs and IT departments with the means to meet this challenge.

In today’s enterprise, change often takes place in isolated silos without an understanding of its broader impact on the business. Traditional approaches for managing change too often yield suboptimal results and expose a company to greater costs and risks.
 

Highly distributed enterprises can result in silos of change

In contrast, Serena’s Change Governance approach helps CIOs extend their leadership initiatives to capitalize on change. With Serena solutions, change is addressed holistically through a process-centric framework that enables seamless integration and collaboration among business units, geographies, and IT. This integration not only creates greater efficiencies and economies, it also ensures that changes align with the priorities and goals set by senior management, rather than those set by individual departments or regions.

Bottom line: Mid- to large-size companies may invest roughly 5 to 7 percent of revenues in IT–literally tens of millions of dollars. Change Governance solutions are helping companies improve business practices and significantly reduce the investment required to keep IT up and running. The end result? IT can deliver strategic value and benefits to the business: higher quality, increased profitability, and enhanced competitive advantage.

Learn more »