Inappropriate changes may, amongst other things, impair the smooth handling of business processes or specialised tasks, or even cause the IT systems involved to fail completely. Even when using the most comprehensive testing procedure, it cannot be ruled out that a change will turn out to be faulty during later production operations.

If, in the course of the change process, the impact, category, or priority of a submitted change request is assessed incorrectly in terms of the business processes or specialised tasks involved, the organisation in question may fall short of its desired security level. Such misjudgements predominantly occur when there is a lack of coordination between the persons responsible for IT and the responsible specialised departments.