Change Management (ITSM) - Process Overview

Process Overview

Change management would typically be composed of the raising and recording of changes, assessing the impact, cost, benefit and risk of proposed changes, developing business justification and obtaining approval, managing and co-ordinating change implementation, monitoring and reporting on implementation, reviewing and closing change requests.

ITIL defines the change management process this way:

The goal of the change management process is to ensure that standardized methods and procedures are used for efficient and prompt handling of all changes, in order to minimize the impact of change-related incidents upon service quality, and consequently improve the day-to-day operations of the organization.

ISO 20000 defines the objective of change management (part 1, 9.2) as:

To ensure all changes are assessed, approved, implemented and reviewed in a controlled manner.

Change management is responsible for managing change process involving:

• Hardware
• Communications equipment and software
• System software
• All documentation and procedures associated with the running, support and maintenance of live systems.

Any proposed change must be approved in the change management process. While change management makes the process happen, the decision authority is the Change Advisory Board (CAB), which is made up for the most part of people from other functions within the organization. The main activities of the change management are:

• Filtering changes
• Managing changes and the change process
• Chairing the CAB and the CAB/Emergency committee
• Reviewing and closing of Requests for Change (RFCs)
• Management reporting and providing management information