CHANGE MANAGEMENT

The following illustrates the stages of change management:

Oblivious to change - Hey, did the switch just reboot?

Aware of change - Hey, who just rebooted the switch?

Announcing change - Hey, I'm rebooting the switch. Let me know if that will cause a problem.

Authorizing change - Hey, I need to reboot the switch. Who needs to authorize this?

Scheduling change - When is the next maintenance window? I'd like to reboot the switch then.

Verifying change - Looking at the fault manager logs, I can see that the switch rebooted as scheduled.

Managing change - Let's schedule the switch reboot to week 45 so we can do the maintenance upgrade and reboot at the same time.

The Role of Change Management

The main aim of the Change Management process is toensure that standardized methods and procedures areused for efficient and prompt handling of all changes, in order to minimize the impact of change related problemsupon the service quality of the organization.

Benefits of Change Mangement

• Evaluates the risk involved in a change.• Identifies the cause of changes that are required in IT services.• Maintains records of changes, which occurs in software and hardware components.• Provides accurate and timely information about the changes to be implemented in IT services.• Determines the cost and benefit associated with a change.• Ensures that changes are implemented with minimum disruption in the working process of the company .

Roles in Change Management

• Change initiator, manager, owner, CAB, controller, implementer• CAB is implemented at Kohls today• The initiator, owner, and implementer are usually the same group or person today

Source: Service Orientation: Winning Strategies and Best Practices Author Paul Allen, Cambridge University Press © 2006 (362 pages)

Where does Change Management fit in the ITIL framework?

Fundamentals of Change Management

• it is essential that changes are managed and controlled systematically, thusminimizing any undue disruption to IT services delivered to the customer.

• RFCs can arise in order to correct a fault in the IT infrastructure that has beenidentified through the Problem Management process.

• provides a way of managing and controlling the way changes areinitiated, assessed, planned for, scheduled and implemented.

Change Management assists Incident Management by:• providing the Service Desk with information on current and future change activity, as well as change history• providing controlled implementation of changes• providing up-to-date information to customers on progress of change.

Problem Management assists Change Management by:• providing input into the change management process through the formal issuing of Requests for Change (RFC).

Configuration Management assists Change Management by:

• recording which CIs have been changed and controlling the status of CIs throughout the entire CI lifecycle. Configuration Management ensures any changes made to CIs are recorded and kept accurate.

Change Advisory Board Committee Objective:

The objective of this committee is to review all changes / moves to production to improve the stability, availability and reliability of our systems. The committee intends to add the oversight necessary to assure that all associates are following the required approval process. This committee will bring consistency to the approval process regardless of platform.

Committee Make-up:

The committee will be composed of 6 - 10 members of the IS department.

Change Categories:

The Committee will ask that all changes be categorized into 3 categories:

Emergency – These changes will be the quick changes made to a production system that is down, and are needed in order to get the system back up and running. These changes will not be reviewed by the Committee.

Routine – These are day-to-day type tasks. These tasks must be low risk / low impact and will be exempt from review by the Committee. The changes that are to be considered ‘routine’ can be found in G/Share/IS/Change Mgmt/Routine. To be included on the ‘routine’ list, the change must be qualified and approved by the appropriate Director. If a production system outage occurs as a result of a change on this list, this activity will be removed from the list and require Committee approval in the future.

Planned – These are planned changes that impact production systems. These changes are normally not performed daily. This type of change will be reviewed by the Committee.

Process:

For each ‘Planned’ change, an entry in the Change Review Log (RFC Log) document must initially be completed. This log will be the on-going documentation that is retained for historical purposes. Each change will only require one line of information to be completed on this Change Review Log. This Log can be found in G/Share/IS/Change Mgmt.

A second document known as the Request for Change (RFC) form must be completed for each ‘Planned’ change. This document can also be found in G/Share/IS/Change Mgmt.

The Committee will review each Request for Change (RFC) form with a status of 'submitted' at each meeting.

CAB approval

IS event calendar

Perform change

Author RFCand submit

Log as implemented

xxxx Change Process

Change request

Change classification

Change authorization

Change development

Change review

Change closure

Change Management Process

Change Advisory Board

Committee Objective:

The objective of this committee is to review all changes / moves to production to improve the stability, availability and reliability of our systems. The committee intends to add the oversight necessary to assure that all associates are following the required approval process. This committee will bring consistency to the approval process regardless of platform.

Committee Make-up:

The committee will be composed of 6 - 10 members of the IS department.

Change Categories:

The Committee will ask that all changes be categorized into 3 categories:

Emergency – These changes will be the quick changes made to a production system that is down, and are needed in order to get the system back up and running. These changes will not be reviewed by the Committee.

Routine – These are day-to-day type tasks. These tasks must be low risk / low impact and will be exempt from review by the Committee. The changes that are to be considered ‘routine’ can be found in G/Share/IS/Change Mgmt/Routine. To be included on the ‘routine’ list, the change must be qualified and approved by the appropriate Director. If a production system outage occurs as a result of a change on this list, this activity will be removed from the list and require Committee approval in the future.

Planned – These are planned changes that impact production systems. These changes are normally not performed daily. This type of change will be reviewed by the Committee.

Process:

For each ‘Planned’ change, an entry in the Change Review Log (RFC Log) document must initially be completed. This log will be the on-going documentation that is retained for historical purposes. Each change will only require one line of information to be completed on this Change Review Log. This Log can be found in G/Share/IS/Change Mgmt.

A second document known as the Request for Change (RFC) form must be completed for each ‘Planned’ change. This document can also be found in G/Share/IS/Change Mgmt.

The Committee will review each Request for Change (RFC) form with a status of 'submitted' at each meeting.

If the Committee approves the form without any additional information needed, the requestor is approved to implement the change as defined.

If the Committee denies the change, the requestor will be expected to personally attend and discuss the request with the Committee at a subsequent meeting.

Following implementation of any requested change, it is the responsibility of the respective Manager to update the Change Review Log to reflect the current status (i.e. implemented, backed out, etc).

General Information:

Only changes to Production will be reviewed by the Committee. Test system changes are excluded from the approval process.

The Committee will meet at least once each week for an hour.

The November through early January freeze period will still exist. During the freeze, all changes will require the approval of (2) VPs. During that timeframe, every attempt will be made to have (2) VPs at the meetings in order to approve any submitted change. One of the VPs should be the VP the requestor reports to.

Please keep in mind that if the Committee has questions on a specific request, it will cause the approval of that request to be delayed until the next scheduled meeting. It is recommended that for those requests that need approval quickly, the requestor should personally attend the daily review meeting and answer questions that arise at that meeting.

All changes going through this process should be posted on the IS Events Calendar, and the RFC number must appear in the RFC field.

All IS associates are expected to adhere to this policy.

“THE MORE THINGS CHANGE… THE MORE THEY STAY THE SAME.” -Anonmyous