The purpose of the change management process is to control the lifecycle of all changes, enabling beneficial changes to be made with minimum disruption to IT services. |
The objectives of the Change Management Process are to:
Change Control supports three types of changes: standard, normal and emergency change. The change type determines which state model is used and the change process that must be followed.
A standard change is a pre-authorized change that is low risk, relatively common and follows a specified procedure or work instruction.
Changes of this type are most frequently implemented, have repeatable steps and were successfully implemented earlier. As Standart changes are pre-approved, they follow the process in which authorization steps are not required.
Approved standard change requests can be predefined as a template in the appropriate catalog to make requesting a change more efficient. Also, this capability lets the team to control the changes that are authorized as standard.
A change that must be implemented as soon as possible, for example, to resolve a major incident or implement a security patch.
The cases where emergency change is suitable are (for example):
The priority of the emergency change lets it bypass group approvals and go straight to the Authorization state, for approval by the CAB group.
Normal change is any service change that is not a standard change or an emergency change.
Generally, the process of the change requests of such type prescripts two levels of approval before implementing, reviewing, and closing.
These changes require a full range of evaluations and authorizations, such as: technical approval; Change Advisory Board (CAB) authorization; change manager authorization; and others. Normal changes planning foresees at least possible disruption to service, so these changes often scheduled outside change blackout windows or during defined maintenance windows. This type of changes is used to implement profitable change for any service that is not a standard or emergency change.