A change calendar is an important part of a well-designed change management process. An effective change calendar does not need to be a fancy integrated tool or part of an expensive change management system. In fact, your change calendar can be as simple as a published document showing all the approved changes for a given time period.

The change calendar drives the Change Advisory Board (CAB) meeting. Each change listed on the calendar is briefly reviewed, and the change owner (present at the meeting) attests to the readiness of that particular change for implementation. The items on the change calendar are separated into either “approved” and “pending” changes.

The approved changes are the items that have passed the standards of readiness already in place. For example, an approved change will have testing evidence as well as the required managerial approvals attached. Prior to the meeting, the CAB will have reviewed all submitted changes and classified each change as approved or pending. On the other hand, a change may be classified as pending because required approvals were not obtained before the CAB meeting. Furthermore, depending on the local practices, the CAB manager may approve such change requests for implementation the following week if the submitter succeeds in obtaining the required approvals by close of business on the following Monday.


Another important indicator on the change calendar is the planned implementation time—it indicates whether a specific change can be implemented during regular business hours or after business hours. For example, a change that may require shutting down a software system or turning off a piece of hardware may need to be implemented after business hours in order to not interfere with the normal operation of the business.

Moreover, the change calendar typically lists the names and contact information of the change requesters and the release and deployment managers, so that when necessary, parties can reach each other. Depending on the volume of change in a particular environment, an open phone bridge may be a standard arrangement to facilitate after-hours communication.



Lastly, the summary section of the change calendar document lists any known future changes that the development and support community need to be aware of, such as major planned downtime or major system upgrades that may require action on their part.

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According to a 2005 Gartner report[i], “IT change management is a formalized process with documented procedures and work flows…. The goal is to enable controlled changes while preserving the integrity and service quality of the production environment.”  An important part of this process is the Change Advisory Board (CAB), whose charter is to review requests for change and ultimately, either approve or reject such requests for change.  Let’s examine the top 10 reasons why a CAB might reject a change request.

1. REQUIRED APPROVALS NOT ATTACHED

Any IT change control process worth its salt will require approval for a change from someone other than the change submitter.  Typically, each major subsystem, or even application, is assigned an “owner,” who is responsible for approving every change to the subsystem or application.  This type of structured procedure keeps the chain of responsibility intact and prevents unannounced or unauthorized changes from disrupting a production environment.

2. NO BACK-OUT PLAN INCLUDED

Another basic part of any sensible change control process is the inclusion of a back-out or fallback plan.  With any proposed change to a controlled IT environment, there is always a chance that some unforeseen circumstance may prevent the successful implementation of the change, whether it be large or small.  A clear statement of how to return the environment to its original, pre-change state is a critical component of every well-planned change.

3. REQUEST SUBMITTED PAST STATED DEADLINE

In any operative enterprise or organization, IT change management is a continuous process that evolves with the needs of the company.  In order to manage change effectively and smoothly, everyone must comply with his or her deadlines so that other people responsible for other steps of this continuous process have a reasonable amount of time to properly perform their function. 

For example: at Company A, software changes are managed on a weekly basis; therefore, a reasonable deadline would be that all changes scheduled for next Monday be submitted by Friday at noon, so that they can be reviewed at the weekly Friday 2:00 p.m. Change Meeting.

If some such logical schedule is not followed, chaos is sure to ensue.

4. EVIDENCE OF SUCCESSFUL TESTING NOT INCLUDED

Another vital requirement of a well-managed change system is that all change requests must include associated and relevant testing evidence.  Change to a controlled environment should not ever be made “on faith.”  There are, of course, situations where the exact actions that will occur in the controlled environment cannot be performed in the test environment (like sending money to a client), but all changes should be simulated to the utmost degree possible to reduce the likelihood of errors in the controlled system.  Change requests with no testing evidence attached should be rejected by the CAB – except where special and well-understood circumstances apply.

5. IMPLEMENTATION INSTRUCTIONS MISSING OR INCOMPLETE

To standardize and further automate your change process, you will need a plan that describes what the change action is.  Some companies refer to this plan as an implementation plan.  Regardless of what you call it at your company, you will need this plan.  As your organization changes over time, the implementation plan should evolve with such changes.  Moreover, it also has to capture all the standard change actions that have occurred company-wide.  It is the responsibility of the change requester to add the required information to the plan.  It is the responsibility of the CAB to assure that the plan is valid before anyone tries to act on the instruction it contains.  In sum, it makes perfect sense that an incomplete implementation plan will cause a change request to be rejected.

6. REQUESTED IMPLEMENTATION DATE IS IN A FREEZE PERIOD

Most organizations will block off certain days every month when any normal changes to the controlled environment are disallowed.  For instance, the change blackout period might be the end of each month when the company is closing out its financial records for the month.  During such a period, only emergency changes are permitted, and any such emergency change usually requires a high-level approval in order to move forward. 

The requirement of high-level approval accomplishes 2 objectives: 
1) Assures that senior managers are aware of the change
2) Discourages the misuse of the emergency change method by those who somehow did not complete a process on time.

7. REQUESTED CHANGE COLLIDES WITH ANOTHER SCHEDULED CHANGE

Another important function of the CAB is to prevent colliding change requests from being teed up at the same time. 

Example: The owners of System A are not fully aware of the plans and activities of System B.

Over time, the CAB should become sufficiently aware in all of the company’s systems that it can help prevent changes in one system that would negatively affect another. 

Example: System A produces output that is used by one or more other systems in the company.

Therefore, a planned change in System A might cause a problem in some downstream system that the owners of System A might not have considered.  The CAB can reject a change request when it detects such a situation.

8. REQUIRED CAVEATS/LANGUAGE NOT INCLUDED IN APPROVAL

A particular company may require that certain statements are included in every change approval form.  A federally regulated company may require, for example, that the Sarbanes-Oxley compliant controls be included in all change approval forms.  The lack of adhering to such controls would be a valid reason for rejecting a change request.

9. PROPER REQUEST ROUTING INFORMATION NOT SPECIFIED

A well-designed IT change request will include instructions that tell an analyst what group the change request should be sent to—that is, who will actually do the work described on the change form.  Without such information, the change request cannot be processed and should be returned to the requester.

10. CAB DECIDES THAT A REQUEST IS NOT COST-EFFECTIVE

The CAB can operate at a number of different levels.  In addition to processing the daily requests for change to existing processes, the CAB can also evaluate the cost-effectiveness of large, capital-intensive changes.  Some companies reserve such reviews for changes with an estimated cost over “X” dollars.  If the CAB decides that the proposal is not cost-effective, the project would be stopped.

The 10 issues described above are just some basic characteristics of a well-designed change process.  To delve deeper into ITIL-based change management, try the change management section at  IT Library .

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[i] Gartner, Inc., Optimize Change and Configuration Management With People, Processes and Tools by Ronni Colville, Patricia Adams, Kris Brittain, August 3, 2005.

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Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) recently published their research for Enterprise Trends in the Service Desk for 2009. In this survey they interviewed 158 respondents on the future vision of the Service Desk Strategy at their own organizations. EMA found that enabling Self-Service technologies for their business customers was on the top list of priorities for the Service Desk in 2009. Their study found that 56% of their respondents have already deployed or are planning to deploy a service catalog. Also an overwhelming 82% of the respondents are looking to make improvements in their customer satisfaction of their Service Desk. With the top priorities of the Service Desk being Service Catalog, Self-Service, and Knowledge Management, we can clearly see that the IT strategies for the future will take advantage of the value in placing IT service offerings in the hands of managers and users.

In addition to EMA’s findings we have also uncovered that many CIOs either have placed self-service as a high priority or are looking to make improvements within their own Service Desk. Avaya’s CIO, Lorie Buckingham, cited that Boosting Agility was one of her top 5 current priorities in the August 17, 2009 edition of eWeek. Furthermore, Buckingham, went on to describe that the improvements made over a three year journey would increase the ease of doing business with Avaya and improve their ability to grow business without an increase in IT costs. Moving towards agile IT operations would mean significant improvements in customer and partner relationship management, operational process improvements, and the deployment of increased customer self-service capabilities.

Implementing ITIL process-based tools with an existing process are no joke to ICW Group Insurance Companies’ CIO Kevin Harris. According to a recent case study in Insurance & Technology Magazine, Harris was able to improve ICW’s incident management resolution times by approximately 90% and reducing the help desk personnel costs by 25%. This journey required optimization within Incident Management and integrating their ITSM tool with processes such as Change and Asset Management. “The net result,” according to Harris, “is that we significantly increase[d] overall customer satisfaction.”

EMA also stated in their trend analysis that in 2009, the service desk is still expected to continue its role as a central component in any service support and delivery strategy. Also, that CIOs are continually looking for ways to leverage the service desk to meet corporate expectations for IT service functions despite budget reductions. They also stated that organizations are looking towards process improvements and improving customer service in the Service Desk that will reduce the overall total cost of supporting the business.

Perspective

Many organizations are seeing the value in implementing a strategy towards improving the customer service and reducing the cost of the help desk by providing Self Service capabilities. Be it, the service catalog, a knowledge base, or the ability to open Incident Tickets via the web. As the Internet and Technology have became more a part of our everyday life from being able to buy a book on the internet to the replace of email to the written correspondence we see the technology makes life easier once it has been fully implemented and adopted.

I remember back in 1997 when the web was relatively fresh and new. The ability to send an email directly to a webmaster from a CGI scripted web form made my life easier when I wanted to correspond to a webmaster. This technology allowed me to quickly send the information I wanted to transpose without opening up an email application. Today, I can order a pizza online and visually see each step of the order delivery process along the way.

Sometimes the corporate environment is a bit behind in developing solutions that the consumer culture has already embraced. My perspective is that in the near future, once the service catalog and self-service capabilities become the norm, business customers will be able to track their IT order from start to finish. They will see what department is fulfilling their order and will have an accurate estimated time of delivery for their request. Maybe someday, we’ll hear stories of IT organizations being able to deliver fully provisioned desktop PCs to their business customers in 30 minutes or less.

Sources

Erickson-Harris, Lisa (2009, June 15). Enterprise Trends in the Service Desk 2009. EMA Advisory Note.
(2009, August 17). Priority List. eWeek, [26(14)], 43.
O’Connor, Nick (2009, August/September). Trouble Tickets No Longer Trouble. Insurance & Technology, [34(6)], 19.

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