Impact analysis looks at the services, consumers, and assets affected by a change to determine impact of a change on your organization. The handling of RFCs and proposals depend on their impact level and how change managers or CAB members assess the impact.
The impact level is based on a combination of predefined thresholds and the analysis result, which is calculated based on the number of affected services, consumers, assets, and detected conflicts and on the weights assigned to each of them. An implementation date that coincides with another scheduled change is an example of a conflict.
| Analysis Result | Impact Level |
|---|---|
| Less than 15 | Low |
| Greater than or equal to 15 and less than 30 | Medium |
| Greater than or equal to 30 | High |
The following Impact Assessment selections are available:
- Under Investigation
- Investigated but determined insignificant
- Investigated, no action required
- Investigated, rescheduling required
- Ignored
- (None)
If either the impact level is "Low" or the impact assessment is "Investigated but determined insignificant" or "Investigated, no action required," the RFC is approved and moves to the Approved Changes state and continues through the rest of the workflow. Otherwise, the RFC moves to the CAB Review/Planning state for a formal review of the impact.
Impact Analysis Results
The results shown on the Impact Analysis tab include the following information:
- Potential Impact. This section includes the
CIs in the
Affected CIs field. It is divided into the
following three lists, which display the ID, title, category, and state of each
CI.
- Affected Services. Service CIs, such as "IT Service" or "Business Service."
- Affected Consumers. CIs that model end-users or customers.
- Affected Configuration Items. CIs that represent IT assets, such as applications or servers.
- Schedule Conflicts. This section lists other change items scheduled to be implemented during the same period of time. It includes the ID, title, implementation start and end dates, and state of each change item.
- Related Activity. This section includes
incidents and other change items that are associated with the same services and
CIs. It is divided into the following two lists, which display the ID, title,
type, and state.
- Active Incidents against Affected Services and CIs. The items in the Incident Management application that have one or more of the same CIs in the Affected CIs field.
- Active Change Requests against Affected Services and CIs. Other change items that have one or more of the same CIs in the Affected CIs field.
- Analysis Result. This number is calculated based on the number of affected services, consumers, configuration items, and detected collisions; and the weights assigned to each of them. It is updated automatically each time the report is generated.
indicates a collision. A collision is detected when other change items have the
same implementation time as this RFC; or other change items associated with the
same CIs were submitted, under review, or scheduled for implementation.
The results also include the following fields that are populated after a formal impact analysis review:
- Impact Assessment. The option that was selected during the review.
- Impact Assessment Date. The date and time the review took place.
- Impact Level (when reviewed). The level of impact when the review took place.
- Analysis Result (when reviewed). The analysis result that was calculated when the review took place. This can differ from the current, real-time value.
You can also use the Change Calendar Feed included in the Service Calendar to see active changes by month, week, and day.