The Small Change Illusion: Why Minor Policy Decisions Create Major IT Work

Business leaders often describe a policy change as simple: one new approval step, a slightly different eligibility rule, or a revised deadline. IT may then respond with questions that sound disproportionate to the request. This episode explains why. Mirko Peters follows a minor policy decision across workflows, roles, data structures, interfaces, reporting, testing, training, and customer communication. The issue is not that IT resists change; it is that business meaning has physical consequences once it becomes system behavior. Using a generalized consulting example, the episode shows how teams can distinguish a genuinely local change from one with a wider blast radius. Listeners will learn how to ask better impact questions, identify hidden dependencies early, assign decision ownership, and choose sensible levels of analysis without turning every request into a lengthy project. The central lesson is practical: before asking whether a change is easy, ask what else currently depends on the rule being changed.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/business-it-it-business--6867401/support.To continue the conversation, follow Mirko Peters on LinkedIn, where more insights and real-world examples are shared from both business and IT perspectives.