Are you sick of 2-hour, 30-person CAB meetings?
If you’ve ever stared at a calendar invite titled “Weekly CAB – Mandatory” and wondered whether half the attendees even know why they are there, you aren’t alone.
Traditional Change Advisory Board (CAB) meetings have become one of IT’s biggest productivity taxes. Two hours of thirty people waiting to make a handful of decisions isn’t governance, it’s bureaucracy.
Fortunately, the industry is waking up. Modern platforms like ChangeBreeze are redefining the process with vCAB (Virtual Change Advisory Boards). The goal is simple: keep the governance, kill the meeting.
The Real Cost of "Just in Case"
On paper, CAB makes sense: gather stakeholders, review risk, and vote. But in practice, it usually looks like this:
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30 people invited “just in case.”
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Only 3 - 5 changes are actually relevant to the group.
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Long silences while attendees multitask in the background.
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Decisions rushed in the final 10 minutes because time ran out.
Let’s look at the math. 30 people × 2 hours = 60 person-hours per meeting. If you run this weekly, you are burning 240 hours a month on overhead. For MSPs and internal IT departments, that is expensive engineering and management time that should be spent on actual work.
Not All Changes Are Created Equal
The fatal flaw of the traditional model is treating every change as if it requires the entire village to approve it.
A firewall rule tweak does not need the HR systems owner. A patch schedule doesn’t need the business strategy lead. Yet, traditional invites include everyone to cover all bases. This leads to decision fatigue, where people vote yes just to end the call.
Enter vCAB: Governance Without the Crowd
The smarter alternative is the Virtual CAB (vCAB). Rather than forcing a synchronized two-hour block, vCAB operates asynchronously.
Platforms like ChangeBreeze structure this by sending targeted notifications only to the specific people needed for a specific change.
Targeted Relevance: A reviewer only sees the changes that impact their domain.
Asynchronous Voting: Reviewers vote, comment, and approve on their own schedule within a set window.
Defined Rules: The system enforces consensus models (e.g., unanimous vs. majority) based on the risk level.
Why Written Comments Beat Conference Calls
There is a massive difference between discussing a change verbally and documenting it.
In a meeting, context gets lost in the air. A decision is made, and the why is forgotten. In a structured vCAB, feedback is written and attached directly to the change ticket.
The Audit Trail: Questions and answers are threaded.
The Rationale: Approvers can see why a peer rejected a change or asked for a rollback plan.
The Clarity: Engineers write less ambiguous feedback when it’s on the record.
Saving Time Without Sacrificing Control
A common fear is that removing the physical meeting increases risk. The opposite is true.
Traditional meetings compress risk assessment into a hurried time block. vCAB spreads that review out, allowing stakeholders to actually read the details rather than skimming them while someone talks in the background.
With tools like ChangeBreeze, you maintain:
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Structured risk assessments.
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Documented approvals.
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Full compliance with ITIL best practices.
But you gain:
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Engineers spending time on changes, not meetings.
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Decisions that aren't bound by a Wednesday at 2:00 PM timeslot.
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Approvals from people who actually reviewed the ticket.
Make Governance Relevant Again
If your CAB meetings feel like a ritual where few real decisions are made, it’s time to rethink the approach. You don't have to give up control to be efficient.
By moving toward a virtual model, you get faster approvals, targeted engagement, and better audit trails. It allows you to govern change where the work actually happens. Not in a crowded room full of people waiting for the meeting to end.
Check out our docs on how vCAB works on changebreeze or sign up for a free trial.
Managing vCABs