Case Study: eBay achieves automated change management and slashes open requests from 15,000 to under 50 with OpenText Service Support Manager

Continuous process improvement at eBay. The quest for automation leads to optimization

eBay, following its 2011 acquisition of GSI Commerce, faced a clash of development cultures and a fragile change-management environment: low tool adoption, manual email/spreadsheet processes, and an unreliable homegrown Access issue database left more than 15,000 change requests in “open” status and threatened the company’s ability to scale secure, predictable releases. Leadership tasked a senior change manager with aligning practices, improving adoption and finding a scalable ITSM solution.

By simplifying workflows, eliminating duplicate states and enforcing a “no request—no deployment” policy, the team re-purposed Micro Focus Dimensions CM and rolled out Micro Focus Service Support Manager across 75 products in six months. Open change requests fell from ~15,000 to under 50, the Change Control Board meetings were eliminated (saving roughly $250,000 annually), QA signoff was enforced before production, deployments sped up, rework dropped and confidence in IT’s delivery improved.

eBay

Rick Setlock

Senior Change Manager