[masraum]

We have a change review board for our small corner of the HUGE bank that I work for. I/my group supports a tiny corner (that deals in huge sums of money) of the Investment Banking group.

Our group reviews all of our changes weekly, and sometimes, in depth. We have very few rubber stamped changes except where they are SOP changes that are done on a weekly basis with very low risk and no, or at least, minimal history of issues. The folks in our group that approve are technical and understand what's being done. We occasionally have changes that are deferred due to risk or potential for problems. Once we've reviewed our changes, they are presented to our customers who then must also approve. Our customers are very smart technical folks, but they often don't really understand what we're presenting to them. In my experience, whether the business approves our changes is largely down to the person that presents the change. Some folks are able to present a change so they come off confident and the change seems very low risk. Other folks, even if very compentent and thorough don't instill the same confidence and are much more likely to have their changes heavily questioned. Because of the potential financial impact, the business will occasionally be overcautious and make us defer changes out of fear.