Improving change management and resource optimization: a structured approach to workflow and workload sharing
Sardar, Umbish (2025)
2025
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Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2025120833569
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2025120833569
Tiivistelmä
In modern IT organizations, continuous changes are required to keep them running in market. New regulatory requirements, product enhancements, security fixes, and customer-specific features all generate a constant stream of Change Requests (CRs). As these changes are the essential part of any IT organization, they also introduce significant challenges like planning, coordination, and resource management. Without proper approach, these changes can lead to inaccurate effort estimation, schedule slippage, and excessive pressure on delivery teams.
This thesis focuses on the challenges that Application Delivery Management (ADM) team faces during whole CR delivery process for a mobile financial services app. These challenges include extra time and effort spent, effort leakage (extra unplanned work) or effort overruns and workload distribution among available resources. To understand these issues, mixed-methods approach is used which includes observing the team’s daily work, reviewing past CR records, and collecting survey responses from team members. Current methods are observed that are being used for CR delivery process and gaps are identified.
The results show that unclear or changing requirements, repeated testing with customers and third parties, and weak prioritization are the biggest causes of delays and extra effort. Many employees regularly work more than eight hours per day and often feel overburdened, especially when resources are moved to other projects without proper handover or replacement. Based on these findings and existing literature, the thesis proposes a more structured way of managing change requests. Different ways include better requirement-gathering practices, a clear prioritization process, workload balancing using simple tracking tools, and continuous training and cross-skilling of team members. The suggested framework is designed to reduce effort leakage, improve delivery timelines, and support a fairer workload distribution in resource-constrained IT environments.
This thesis focuses on the challenges that Application Delivery Management (ADM) team faces during whole CR delivery process for a mobile financial services app. These challenges include extra time and effort spent, effort leakage (extra unplanned work) or effort overruns and workload distribution among available resources. To understand these issues, mixed-methods approach is used which includes observing the team’s daily work, reviewing past CR records, and collecting survey responses from team members. Current methods are observed that are being used for CR delivery process and gaps are identified.
The results show that unclear or changing requirements, repeated testing with customers and third parties, and weak prioritization are the biggest causes of delays and extra effort. Many employees regularly work more than eight hours per day and often feel overburdened, especially when resources are moved to other projects without proper handover or replacement. Based on these findings and existing literature, the thesis proposes a more structured way of managing change requests. Different ways include better requirement-gathering practices, a clear prioritization process, workload balancing using simple tracking tools, and continuous training and cross-skilling of team members. The suggested framework is designed to reduce effort leakage, improve delivery timelines, and support a fairer workload distribution in resource-constrained IT environments.