How much change control makes sense for a small IT team?

Keep it lightweight and scale the paperwork to the risk. Agree on what counts as a change, then sort changes by likely impact. A routine, low-risk task can be logged after the fact or handled under a simple standard procedure. Changes to critical systems, or anything with a meaningful outage risk, should have a short plan, a rollback option, a window, and a heads-up before work starts.

The point isn’t permission for every click. It’s making sure the other person knows what’s changing and has a chance to flag a concern. A shared ticket queue or change log can be enough for a tiny team.

I’d start with a shared record rather than a formal committee. Use your existing ticketing tool if you have one, or a simple shared log. Capture the system, proposed timing, what will change, likely impact, implementation steps, and how to reverse it if needed. Afterward, note whether it worked and notify the people who need to know.

For the two of you, a quick review before higher-risk work may be plenty. If your manager needs to approve certain changes, define those cases clearly instead of making every entry wait for a sign-off.

There’s also a training angle here. Asking someone to write down the impact and rollback plan can make them think through the change before they touch production. That’s useful even when you’re the one approving it.

Keep the template short, though. If it takes longer to fill out than to make a low-risk change, people will work around it. Start with a few fields and add detail only where the risk calls for it.

Separate advance coordination from approval. With a small team, it may be enough to require a heads-up before changes that affect shared services, have customer impact, or are hard to reverse. That gives you a chance to spot conflicts without turning yourself into a gatekeeper for every task.

Also write down who owns which decisions and what counts as urgent break-fix work. That makes expectations clearer for both of you, especially when one person is covering for the other.

On the meeting side, a review meeting can still be useful, but it should add something beyond reading the request aloud. A brief summary of the purpose, timing, and customer or service impact gives the group a starting point. Then use the meeting for questions, dependencies, and risks that need discussion.

If people keep asking for details already in the request, check whether the impact is explained in terms they can use to make a decision. If it is, ask whether those changes can be reviewed asynchronously and reserve meetings for the ones that need discussion.