Change management

This is an essay. It expresses the opinions and ideas of some Wikimedians but may not have wide support. This is not policy on Meta, but it may be a policy or guideline on other Wikimedia projects. Feel free to update this page as needed, or use the discussion page to propose major changes.

Change management is the technique and tactic of dealing with change, typically the death of a relative or some event caused by the Wikimedia Foundation (which has some "change management" staff to counter "change aversion"). Change management takes the change in question as a given, which is definitely appropriate for past deaths but less so for human decisions.

In fact, change management is sometimes an euphemism for a post-disaster intervention, caused by a lack of disaster prevention. As well known from healthcare and hydrogeological risk management, prevention is always considerably cheaper: a design process must take collateral damage and other externalities into account from the very earliest phases to be effective.