Re: Change Control

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Hector,

(Sorry for the delay, I'm out of the country at present)

In a message dated 6/3/02 3:55:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
hsanchez@driscollchildrens.org writes:


> I work for a Children's Hospital in South Texas.  We are a pretty small shop
> as far as the AS/400 goes.  3 programmers and 2 operators.  I used to work
> for our Electric Utility and in a much bigger shop.  None of the
> Programmers/Analyst had Security Rights to Change Live Objects, Source Code
> or Files.  Everything was done in Test and we had someone in charge of
> Change Control to move everything over once we got the proper signatures.
>
> Recently we had an I/S audit and the auditors are requiring us to use some
> form of Change Control.  The other 2 programmers are very much against this
> and so far we have avoided doing such.  So my question is this, are most
> 400 shops small and dont do Change Control, or are we unique in not doing
> so?


I've always been a big advocate of structured change control, even if it's
just on paper.  Sometimes the industry, rather than the size of the shop,
determines the requirement from an IT audit perspective.  Pharmaceutical
companies, banks, and hospitals are held to tighter EDP audit restrictions
than are most other shops.  I consulted to a hospital with a shop identical
in size to yours many years ago.  The problem there was that they had no
change management or segregated development machine, and the development
staff often made "quick fixes" while signed on under the QSECOFR profile
fixing tuning or configuration problems, which locked all of the users out of
the "fixed" programs.

Change management is good.  Write your own if you cannot afford one of the
available products.  Developers resisting its' implementation are either not
that good, or consider their access to be more important than operating the
business in a professional manner.  Which is _NOT_ good...

JMHO,

Dean Asmussen
Enterprise Systems Consulting, Inc.
Fuquay-Varina, NC  USA
E-mail:  DAsmussen@aol.com

"Beware of programmers bearing screwdrivers."  -- Old CrossTalk Saying