IT‑IS‑Networking
Technology › Automation & Change Governance

Change Management

A process designed from first principles, proven, and only then fitted with a commercial product — which is the right order.

Also known as Change Control, Release Governance

Left to right is time. Each row is one of the 16 disciplines this one worked alongside, ordered so kindred disciplines sit next to each other rather than alphabetically — a landscape only means anything if neighboring rows belong together. Height is the work running in that domain in that year, weighted by what failure would have cost — life-safety ×3, a statutory obligation ×2.2, the estate itself ×1.5, an evaluation ×1. Every project declares which of those it was, so each ridge traces to an entry you can open and disagree with. Only the work that used this technology is counted, so what shows here is the company it kept rather than the record around it. Height and color are on the record-wide scale rather than this page’s own, so a modest estate draws a modest landscape and any two of these pages can be read against each other.

Designed a change management process and system for JEA while at Coleman Technologies — originally web-based, built on SQL 7.0 and Visual InterDev — and carried the approach to the City of Jacksonville, where it ran as the enterprise standard for years until succeeded by the Computer Associates change management platform.

The city eventually bought a commercial tool to do what the process already defined, which is the right order: the process was proven first and the product fitted to it rather than the other way round. The Computer Associates platform was itself later succeeded by ServiceNow, and the process outlasted both — which is the point.

Applied in

  • Career Reference Record — Design, Build and Publishing PlatformApril–September 2026A cross-linked reference work built as a derived graph: edges declared once, every index, backlink and chart generated from them, published static with per-document access control.
  • Enterprise Architecture Practice Build2024–2026An architecture practice of up to fourteen, built and run to a design review gate and a weekly rhythm — so engagements were delivered against one design language rather than individual preference.
  • Network Orchestration Proof of Concept2025–2026Itential and Gluware assessed against traditional automation for the group's parent company — built out on virtualized topologies rather than judged on datasheets, under a signed statement of work, closing with a master services agreement.
  • Commercial Site Rebuild and Live Domain MigrationApril–September 2026Twenty pages moved off a hosted page builder onto a static build, and a live domain repointed to a new host without touching any of the six records carrying its mail.
  • Architecture Review BoardFrom November 2021The successor governance body, and the first with a budget attached — a five-to-ten year capital plan rather than a rolling list of purchases.
  • Consolidated CAD/911 Dispatch System2016–2024Two agencies with separate commands onto one dispatch platform, cutting response times from five to ten minutes down to one to two.
  • Enterprise Core Network2005–2024The city's core network across nineteen years — architecture, standards and, when it mattered, hands on the equipment.
  • Infrastructure and Integration Automation2018–2024Recurring infrastructure and integration work automated on orchestration platforms, governed on the principle that automation multiplies the blast radius of a mistake.
  • Main Data Center Physical Connection Layout2009–2024The as-built record of every port, patch and strand in the main data center — a naming convention where the identifier is the location, carried to revision 21 over fifteen years.
  • Enterprise Architecture Program2009–2024The EA practice itself — business, information, technical and solution viewpoints, with strategy, assessments and multi-year capability roadmaps for a platform shared by agencies that answered to different elected officers.
  • The Utility Relationship: Twenty-Five Years, Two EmployersOctober 1999 – January 2024Subject-matter expert to the same municipal utility from October 1999 to January 2024 — first as its consultant, then as the City's counterpart to it, because JEA is an authority under the city charter.
  • Enterprise Asset and Work Management Platform2009–2024Fifteen years and two titles on a platform carrying several lines of business and two outside agencies — stood up as a governed project, fed from the systems that knew the truth, and split in the chargeback model.
  • Enterprise Multi-Tenant Firewall Architecture2020–2024Six independently governed agencies on shared infrastructure, none able to reach, disrupt or inherit the regulatory exposure of any other.
  • Proving Products Before Recommending Them2010–2024A standing part of the architecture function rather than an occasional exercise — pilot against the estate's own conditions, then hand it over with the operators trained.
  • Clerk of the Court Filtering and DMZ Architecture2016–2023A separate filtering estate and demilitarized zone for an independently governed constitutional officer sharing City facilities.
  • Electronic Paper Tablet Assessment and Rollout2019–2023A personal device that became a supported city endpoint — after the enterprise web filtering estate I had built turned out to be the thing breaking it.
  • ISP Cutover, Public IP Renumbering and WAN Modernization2022–2023An estate moved to a new provider and a new public address space, then modernized for remote and hosted working without dropping the applications the business ran on.
  • Solid Waste Systems Modernization2014–2023Legacy route, fleet and scalehouse systems replaced and integrated to cloud, sequenced around an operation with no slow season.
  • Architecture Technology Governance Committee2008–2021The second governance body, and the one where architecture decisions were actually worked — with the operations and delivery teams in the room rather than only architects.
  • Juniper Enterprise Security Suite2009 – 2021A security platform rather than a firewall — selected on an instrument written before anyone knew who would win, operated for twelve years, and retired in stages on a plan the same team wrote.
  • Annex to Main Data Center Consolidation2010–2018Moving one data center into another with the estate live throughout, on three design documents at revisions ten, twelve and ten.
  • Enterprise Firewall Policy and OperationsMay 2009 – March 2017Eight years running the rule base directly across two platform generations — every rule, change and upgrade — then handing it down to a dedicated post rather than holding it.
  • Enterprise Change Management Standard1999–2012A change process designed for a utility in 1999, carried into the City as its enterprise standard, and handed to operations in 2012 — after which it outlasted both commercial platforms bought to run it.
  • Duval County Courthouse Technology Program2008–2012A $12M IT program inside a $350M, 800,000 square foot capital facility, cut over live to a fixed date.
  • JEA Change Management System2000–2003A web-based change management process and system designed from first principles, later carried to the City as the enterprise standard.

Career

See also

Also searched as

  • ITSM
  • ITIL
  • change enablement
  • service management
  • release management