Rethinking CAB: Managing Risk Without Blocking Delivery

Change Advisory Boards (CABs) were created for a good reason: to reduce risk, improve visibility, and protect critical services. In the right context, they still play an important role.

The problem isn’t that CAB exists.

The problem is when CAB becomes the default response to all change, regardless of risk, frequency, or impact. When that happens, CAB stops protecting delivery and starts blocking it.

Why CAB Was Introduced in the First Place

Historically, changes were:

• Infrequent

• Manually executed

• Poorly tested

• Hard to roll back

• High risk by default

In that world, pausing to review changes made sense. CAB provided oversight, accountability, and a shared understanding of risk.

For high-risk, complex, or irreversible changes, this is still true.

When CAB Adds Real Value

CAB works best when it is selective and intentional.

It adds value when changes are:

• High impact or customer-facing

• One-off or non-standard

• Difficult to reverse

• Poorly understood

• Crossing multiple systems or teams

• Carrying regulatory or security implications

In these cases, CAB creates space for challenge, shared responsibility, and informed decision-making. Used this way, it’s a risk-management tool - not a delivery bottleneck.

When CAB Becomes Overkill

Problems arise when CAB is applied to:

• Routine infrastructure updates

• Well-tested, low-risk software changes

• Automated deployments

• Reversible changes with clear rollback paths

• Work that teams deliver multiple times a week through multiple repeatable pipelines

Requiring CAB approval simply because “that’s the process” introduces delays without reducing risk. It also sends an unintended message: we don’t trust our teams or our systems.

Over time, this leads to:

• Slower delivery

• Bypassing the process

• Reduced ownership

• Change is being viewed as something to fear

Risk Is Not Binary

One of the biggest flaws in blanket CAB usage is treating all changes as equally risky.

Modern delivery practices - CI/CD, automated testing, feature flags, blue-green deployments - allow teams to lower risk through design, not just review.

If every change must go through CAB, organisations miss the opportunity to:

• Differentiate between risk levels

• Empower teams to own low-risk change

• Invest in automation and safety

• Shift from approval-based to evidence-based decision-making

Moving From Approval to Enablement

High-performing organisations don’t remove governance - they evolve it.

This often looks like:

• Pre-approved change patterns for low-risk work

• Clear definitions of what requires CAB

• Lightweight peer review instead of formal boards

• Strong observability and rollback practices

• Post-change learning rather than pre-change gating

CAB becomes a support mechanism, not a blocker.

Trust, Evidence, and Accountability

Reducing reliance on CAB doesn’t mean increasing risk. It means shifting trust to where it belongs.

Trust is built through:

• Proven automation

• Clear ownership

• Transparent reporting

• Measured outcomes

• Learning from incidents rather than blaming them

When teams can repeatedly demonstrate safe delivery, mandatory approval loses its value.

So, let's not forget

CAB is not inherently bad. Used well, it protects customers and services from unnecessary risk. But when applied indiscriminately, it slows delivery, undermines trust, and creates friction without benefit.

The way in which we manage and mitigate risk has changed; the question leaders should be asking isn’t:

“Does this change need CAB?”

It’s:

“What level of risk does this change introduce, and what’s the best way to manage it?”

Good governance enables delivery - it doesn’t stand in its way.