• Service Transition Change Management in ITIL - ITIL Course



    Service Transition

    Change Management

    Introduction

    A Change  must be implemented  efficiently  to ensure that it provides  a permanent solution  to a problem,  with minimum  disruption  to services.  Changes  include  new services as well as current services that need to be changed.


    Purpose

    The purpose of Change  Management  is to ensure that standardized  methods  and procedures are used for controlled, efficient and prompt handling of all Changes, in order to minimize the impact of change-related incidents upon service quality.

    Change Management responds to the business and IT Requests for Change that will align the services with the business needs.

    The Change  Management  process  aims at providing  the managed  and controlled environment that the current business requires.


    Objectives

    The objectives of change management are to:

    •              Respond to the customer’s changing business requirements while maximizing value and reducing incidents, disruption and re-work.

    •              Respond  to  the  business  and  IT  requests  for  change  that  will  align  the services with the business needs.

    •              Ensure  that  changes  are  recorde and  evaluated,   and  that  authorized changes  are  prioritized,  planned,  tested,  implemented,   documented   and reviewed in a controlled manner.

    •              Ensure   tha all   changes   to   configuration   items   are   recorde in   the configuration management system.

    •              Optimize overall business risk, it is often correct to minimize business risk, but sometimes  it  is  appropriate  to  knowingly  accept  a  risk  because  of  the potential benefit.





    Scope

    Change can be defined in many ways. The ITIL definition of a change is ‘the addition, modification  or removal  of anything  that could have an effect on IT services.  The scope of change management  covers changes to all configuration  items across the whole service lifecycle

    Furthermore, the scope of the change management process also includes:

    •              Service solutions for new or changed services, including all of the functional requirements, resources and capabilities needed and agreed

    •              Management  information  systems and tools, especially the service portfolio, for the management and control of services through their lifecycle

    •              Technology architectures  and management  architectures required to provide the services

    •   Processes needed to design, transition, operate and improve the services

    •              Measurement    systems,    methods    and   metrics   for   th services,    the architectures, their constituent components and the processes.


    Concept (Service Change)

    Change Management applies some of the most critical concepts in ITIL® that needs to be well-understood.

    Service  Change  is  defined  as  “The  addition,  modification  and  removal  of  an authorized,  planned  or supported  service or service component  and its associated documentation.


    Reasons for changes to arise:

    •   Proactively: as a means of seeking business benefits
    •              Reactively as  a  means  of  resolving   errors  and  adapting   to  changing circumstances





    Other Concepts

    Other vital concepts in Change Management are as follows:

    •              Request  for Change  (RFC):  It is the formal  request  for a change  made  by those  involved   in  the  service,  end-users IT  staff  or  managemen from business  or IT. All RFCs should  be documented  and logged  for traceability purposes.

    •              Change  Proposal:  This  applies  for  cases  where  changes  have  significant implications to the organization as a whole or financially. A Change Proposal requires full details of the proposed change, reasons justified and approved by appropriate levels of business management.


    Scope of Service Change

    The scope of Change Management  covers changes to baseline Service Asset and
    Configuration Items.

    It covers interfaces to internal and external service providers where there are shared assets and Configuration Items which need to be governed by Change Management. Understanding  the  Service  Portfolio  will  allow  all parties  to assess  the  impact  of changes to current and new services.

    There are three types of changes in the scope of a Service Change:

    •              Strategic  Changes:  Changes  brought  by  Service  Strategy  and  business management

    •   Tactical Changes:  Changes  brought  by Service  Design,  Continual  Service
    Improvement and the service level management process.

    •              Operational  Changes:  Changes  brought  by  Service  Operations,  involving corrective changes ore resolving errors





    Change Proposal

    A change proposal is used to communicate  a high level description  of the change. The  change  proposal  is  normally  created  by  the  service  portfolio  management process and is passed to change management for authorization.

    In some organizations, change proposals may be created by a program management office or by individual projects.

    The change proposal should include:

    •              A  high-level  description  of  the  new,  changed  or  retired  service,  including business outcomes to be supported, and utility and warranty to be provided

    •              A full business  case  including  risks,  issues  and  alternatives,  as well  as a budget and financial expectations

    •   An outline schedule for design and implementation of the change.



    Types of Requests and Changes

    Different types of changes may require different types of change requests. The different types of change requests are:
    •              Normal Change: Follows the Normal change management process and can be  categorized  as  Minor,  Major  or  Significant  in  nature.  Some  Normal Changes are standard changes which require simple processes.

    •              Standard  Change:  A  change  to  a  service  or  infrastructure  whereby  the change has been pre-authorized  by Change Management.  These are often handled by the Request Fulfillment process.

    •              Emergency Change: A change with substantial impact on the business, that needs to be attended to immediately due to service failure without sacrificing normal management controls.





    Activities

    Change management ensures that there is a standard process to handle all changes, of which the activities are as follows:

    •   Create and record RFCs


    •   Review RFC and change proposal

    ƒ  Filtering changes


    •   Assess and evaluate the change
    ƒ  Establish appropriate level of change authority

    ƒ  Establish relevant areas of interest


    •   Authorize the change
    ƒ  Obtaining authorization/rejection

    ƒ  Communicating the decision with stakeholders and initiator of RFC


    •   Plan updates

    •   Coordinate Change implementation
    ƒ  Where the change is actually built, tested and implemented


    •   Review and close the Change
    ƒ  Collating the change documentation

    ƒ  Review the change(s) and change documentation

    ƒ  Closing the change document when all actions are completed


    Depending on the type of change, the exact procedures to execute the activities may be different.


    “Seven Rs” of Change Management

    All Requests for Change (RFCs) must be evaluated before approval.

    The 7 Rs of Change Management  state seven questions that must be answered to properly evaluate a change:

    •   Who raised the change?

    •   What is the reason for the change?

    •   What is the return required from this change?

    •   What are the risks involved in the change?





    •   What resources are required to deliver the change?

    •   Who is responsible for the build, test, and implementation of the change?

    •   What is the relationship between this change and other changes?



    Planning and Scheduling

    Changes need to be carefully planned to ensure tasks and processes are carried out accordingly and without ambiguity. When planning a change, Change Management should  carefully  consider  the impact on the business  of the implementation  rather than focusing entirely on IT needs.

    Change  Management  coordinates  the  production  and  distribution  of the  follwoing deliverables:

    •              Schedule of Change (SC): Contains details of all authorized  changes ready for implementation as well as the implementation dates.

    •              Projected Service Outage (PSO): Contains details of changes to agreed SLAs and service availability as well as planned downtime.

    Organizations may find it helpful to predefine change process models and apply them to appropriate  changes  when  they  occur.  This  set of predefined  steps  should  be taken when dealing with specific types of changes in an agreed upon way.

    No change should be approved without taking into consideration  of solutions, if the change  is unsuccessful.  Ideally,  a back-out  plaor remedial  plan  will restore  the organization to its initial situation. However, it is important to note that not all changes are reversible, in which case an alternative approach to remediation is required.



    Authorising Change

    Formal authorization for a change is obtained from a change authority that may be a role, person or a group of people.

    If for any reason, the assigned change authority discovers the change possesses a higher level of risk, the authorization  request is escalated to the appropriate  higher level of authorization.  While the responsibility  for change authorization  lies with the Change Manager, he still must gain Financial Approval, Business Approval and Technology Approval.

    The following must also be taken into consideration:

    •   The implications  of performing  the change,  as well as the impacts  of NOT

    implementing the change.





    •              The importance of empowering the change manager as its primary role is to protect the integrity of the IT infrastructure.


    Change  Advisory Board

    •   Change Advisory Board (CAB)
    ƒ             This is a very important part of Change Management, which constitutes a group of people selected for their capabilities and expertise in various areas of IT.

    ƒ             The CAB members advise the Change Manager in taking decisions on the RFCs. The Change Manager normally chairs the CAB.

    ƒ    Potential CAB members include:

    ¾   Customer

    ¾   User Manager

    ¾   User Group

    ¾   Application Developers

    ¾   Specialist/Technical Consultants

    ¾   Services and Operations

    ¾   Third Parties (if outsourcing)


    •   Emergency Change Advisory Board (ECAB)

    ƒ    For emergency cases when immediate decisions need to be made, an
    Emergency Change Advisory Board (ECAB) is formed.

    ƒ             The members of ECAB may be different from members of CAB and a smaller group of people.




    Review and Close Change

    The purpose of Review and Close Change is to ensure that all changes are carried out and that every change has met its objectives. It is also important to see what can be improved in future (similar) changes. Change review is also known as Post- Implementation Review.

    There are two types of review:
    •              Review of service change: immediately visible to the customer, at the service level





    •              Review of infrastructure change: is concerned with how IT delivers rather than what it delivers, which is usually not visible to the customers


    Roles

    Only individuals with appropriate skills and authority should hold the post of Change
    Manager.

    The main duties of a Change Manager are:

    •   Responsible for main activities of the process

    •   Control RFC

    •   Coordinate and chair the CAB

    •   Authorize changes based on input and advice from CAB


    Detailed duties of a Change Manager are:

    •              Accept, process, log and reject RFCs based on their practicality (depending on the impact of the change, this can be delegated to Change Coordinators).
    •   Issue agenda and circulate RFCs for CAB members

    •   Decide on the suitable expertise to handle RFCs

    •   Convene urgent CAB or ECAB meetings for all urgent RFCs.

    •   Chair all CAB and ECAB meetings

    •   Authorize acceptable Changes adviced by CAB and ECAB

    •   Issue Change Schedules via the Service Desk

    •              Liaise  with  appropriate  parties  to  coordinate  Change  building,  testing  and implementation
    •   Update the Change log on a regular basis

    •   Review all Changes that have been implemented.

    •   Review all outstanding RFCs

    •              Analyze  Change  records  for  trends  or  problems  and  rectify  with  relevant parties
    •   Close RFCs


    It is the Change Manager, not the CAB or ECAB, that authorizes or rejects changes. The CAB is strictly an advisory body.





    Metrics

    It is essential to measure and count the number of Incidents that generates Changes as well as identify the causes of the Changes. Measures link to business goals, cost, service availability and reliability.

    The Key Performance Indicators for Change Management are:

    •   Reduction in the number of changes where remediation is invoked

    •   Reduction in the number of failed changes

    •   Average time to implement based on urgency, priority, or change type

    •   Incidents attributable to changes

    •   Accuracy percentage in change estimate

    •   Number of RFCs accepted or rejected

    •   Number of emergency changes as a percentage of the total



    Challenges

    Challenges affecting Change Management are as follows:

    •              Change  in  culture:  A  central  process  comes  into  place  that  influences everyone’s activities

    •   Bypassing: Projects dodging the Change Management process

    •              Close  relationship  with  Service  Asset  and  Configuration  Management:  To execute a controlled change, all data must be reliable. Change Management relies on configuration data, whereas Service Asset and Configuration Management relies on Change Management for the information on changes

    •   Commitment of the supplier(s) to the process

    •   Commitment of management



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