Information management systems are highly sensitive to configuration
changes due to the complex relationships between all the CIs involved. An
apparently minor change could trigger a chain reaction with catastrophic
results; after impact analysis is performed, any change that does not meet
certain "approval" criteria is automatically routed to the Change Advisory
Board (CAB), which is responsible for evaluating the changes and discussing the
possible side effects of the change before it gives its approval. (See
3. RFC Impact Analysis
for more information.)
The CAB is usually chaired by the change manager, and its members
include other service management managers. The CAB may also include other
stakeholders such as customers or other third-party providers. In the case of
high impact changes, upper management may need to be consulted as strategic
issues and the organization's general policy may come into play.
Note: The default Change Management workflow assumes that the CAB would
be conducted offline, and the change manager would then approve the RFC on
behalf of the CAB. The default workflow can be modified to allow individual CAB
approvals. One approach to allow individual approvals is to use the subtasking
capabilities of
SBM.
Subtasks can be created and assigned to each selected CAB member, and then they
can approve or reject the individual tasks, and the results can be displayed in
the parent RFC.
The CAB must meet regularly to analyze and approve the pending RFCs. The
members discuss the benefits of the RFC and verify that a back-out plan exists
in case the change does not work as expected. They decide the date the RFC
should be implemented, assess the effort, and assess the cost. The CAB also
discusses possible risks, services that are affected, impacts to business
continuity, and disaster recovery.
The results and decisions of the CAB discussion should be collected and
entered in the RFC. The details can be entered directly into the text fields or
attached as supporting documentation using
Add File.
Tip: After the change is approved, it can be decided whether it
should be implemented in isolation or as part of a package of changes that
would be formally equivalent to a single change. The latter approach optimizes
the use of resources, reduces the incompatibilities between different changes,
and simplifies the back-out plan. Change managers can link RFCs by creating a
principle RFC and then grouping the RFCs using the subtasking capabilities of
SBM.
Announcing a Change
You can post an announcement to
Knowledge Management
after completing the
Approve transition from the
CAB Review/Planning state.
When the
Announce Change field is set to
Yes, the Submit form into
Knowledge Management
will be displayed after completing the
Approve transition.
The content for the new announcement will be populated with
information from the article. The start date for the announcement is specified
in the
Implementation Start Date field.
Restriction: You must have permissions
to submit an item into
Knowledge Management
to create an article. For example, you could be a member of the
Contributors role in
Knowledge Management.
Note: Selecting
Load Article Template on the
Content tab will clear the information that
was imported from the change. The content will be replaced with the template.
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