4. Emergency Changes: When Everything Is Urgent, Nothing Is
“We need this implemented immediately.” We've all heard it. Sometimes it's absolutely justified.
A critical security vulnerability.
A major production incident.
A failing service.
A regulatory requirement.
Sometimes, however, “emergency” means something else entirely.
Poor planning.
Missed deadlines.
Business pressure.
A change that wasn't ready in time.
Or a team that simply doesn't want to wait for the normal process.
And that's where emergency changes become interesting.
Emergency doesn't mean uncontrolled
There is a dangerous assumption that emergency change means: “Skip the process.”
It shouldn't. Emergency change means accelerate the decision-making process because waiting creates greater risk. Those are very different things.
You still need enough information to make a reasonable decision.
You still need someone accountable.
You still need to understand the likely impact.
And wherever practical, you still need an implementation and rollback approach.
The difference is that you may not have the luxury of doing all of this in the same way you would for a planned change.
The emergency change trap
Here's where organisations can get into trouble. If emergency changes are difficult to raise, people may avoid declaring them. If they're too easy to declare, everything becomes urgent. And when everything is urgent, the classification becomes meaningless.
That creates a culture where teams learn that the fastest way to get something implemented is to call it an emergency. That's not a Change Enablement problem alone. It's an organisational behaviour problem.
Look behind the numbers
If your organisation has a high percentage of emergency changes, don't simply tell teams to reduce them.
Ask why they're happening.
Look for patterns.
Are emergency changes clustered around particular systems?
Are they coming from particular teams?
Are they linked to recurring incidents?
Are they associated with failed projects?
Are security patches repeatedly being treated as emergencies?
Are business deadlines creating artificial urgency?
The answers can tell you much more than the raw percentage.
Emergency changes can expose other weaknesses
A pattern of emergency changes may point towards:
Problem Management issues - We're fixing the same underlying problem repeatedly.
Capacity or planning issues - Teams don't have enough time to plan properly.
Release Management issues - Changes are being pushed too close to deadlines.
Security weaknesses - Vulnerabilities aren't being identified or remediated early enough.
Governance issues - The normal change process is so slow that teams bypass it.
This is why Change Enablement shouldn't operate in isolation. Change data is organisational intelligence.
What should remain during an emergency?
Even under pressure, try to preserve a few basic controls:
What is changing?
Why does it need to change now?
What could go wrong?
Who is making the decision?
How will we know whether it worked?
What will we do if it doesn't?
That's often enough to provide meaningful governance without creating bureaucracy at exactly the wrong moment.
The retrospective matters
One of the most valuable controls for emergency changes is what happens afterwards.
Not a blame session. A learning session.
Ask:
Was this genuinely an emergency?
Could we have identified the need earlier?
What risk did we accept?
Did the change work as expected?
Did it create downstream impacts?
Should this become a standard change?
Is there a problem we need to address?
That last question is particularly important. An emergency change shouldn't simply disappear once the immediate problem is resolved.
The uncomfortable question
If 30% of your changes are emergencies, are you really dealing with 30% emergencies?
Or have you built a change process where “emergency” is the easiest route to getting work done?
Sometimes the answer isn't better emergency change management. It's fixing the system that creates the emergencies.
Good Change Enablement doesn't just respond to urgency. It helps organisations understand why they're constantly becoming urgent.
Next in the series: Change Success Isn't “It Worked”.
Change Enablement - Beyond the Change Ticket.
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