Transforming Enterprise Change Governance with Intelligent CI/CD Automation

At Blackhawk Network—a global leader in prepaid and payment technologies—the organization pioneered the Intelligent Change Automation Framework through collaboration across engineering, compliance, security, and governance disciplines. This initiative eliminated manual delays in change approvals during application deployments and established a new model for governance-driven DevOps operations.

Previously, deployments required manual forms, lengthy approval cycles, and fragmented tracking, creating inefficiency and risk of compliance failures. The new framework integrates Jenkins (CI/CD) with ServiceNow® (change management) to embed governance directly into the delivery process. Automated ticket creation, intelligent routing, and compliance validation ensure every change is handled with consistency, audit readiness, and regulatory rigor.

Organizational impact includes:
• Embedding compliance rules into the release cycle, reducing governance risk
• Creating transparent approval workflows across multiple disciplines
• Providing complete audit trails to strengthen internal and external oversight
Already deployed across 10 platforms (with expansion to 15+ this year), the system has automated over 1,005 approvals, saving 1,000+ manual hours and $80,000 in direct efficiency gains—on track for $120,000 this year. By bypassing CAB dependencies, it recovers hundreds of business days annually, generating an additional $360,000 to $720,000 in business value while enabling faster, smaller, and safer releases that reinforce compliance and support millions of customer transactions.

This initiative demonstrates organizational excellence in governance and compliance, where automation and cross-functional collaboration deliver both operational speed and regulatory assurance.