Designing an IT change management process for mid-size accounting firms

Accounting firms provide financial services, such as bookkeeping, tax returns, and audit services, for their clients. The Information Technology (IT) department within such organizations supports the firm by ensuring that critical software applications and necessary equipment are available and functioning properly. The lack of effective methods for managing IT system change control processes often results in unplanned downtime, security risks, frustration for the IT department, and compliance issues, which negatively impacts productivity, customer satisfaction, and bottomline performance. To address these problems, this work describes how the Design for Six Sigma methodology can be used as an underlying framework to establish an IT change management processfor mid-size accounting firms. This approach uses service blueprinting, user needs analysis, and affinity diagrams to design a process that fits the needs of the work environment. In addition, a survey of the literature provides additional content from this field, which can be used to create a generalizable frameworkfor managing IT system changes in mid-size accounting firms.