What is the difference between SAP Change Management and SAP Transport Management?

Time and again in business meetings I encounter differing configurations of these two subject areas. However, many customers believe that these two meanings are the same.

Transport management and change management refer to two different layers of the ITSM (IT Service Management) process hierarchy.

Change management administers software change activities and is located between the classic ticket/incident layer and the software distribution layer. Change management is often used by our clients independent of the target technology. A change is split into a leading change, which refers to a mixture of technologies (e.g. changes to SAP® back-end and front-end developments) and dependent changes. The latter types of change inherit information from the leading change and condense relevant information back. They regulate and control the operative changes in the respective target technology. SAP® without the Change Management System mentioned in the question quite simply falls short of requirements.

SAP® Transport Management is a means of identifying, issuing sequences and carrying out quality-assured and repeatable imports of transports. It is intended to manage individual changes, bundles of changes or complete releases across SAP® system tracks, doing away with the need for the responsible person to deal with individual transports.