Features – Change Management

Change: the process responsible for controlling and managing requests to effect changes (RFCs) to the IT Infrastructure team (or any aspect of IT services) to promote business benefit, while minimising the risk of disruption to services.

Change Management controls the processes involved in introducing changes to your IT environment. A Request for Change (RFC) could be initiated as a result of issues identified during the Incident and Problem Management process or as a direct request to implement new systems or functionality.

The ultimate aim is to limit the introduction of errors into your business and therefore the number of incidents being reported to your service desk. However, it is possible that incidents are often related to changes. Contributing factors could be poor impact analysis, lack of thorough testing, resource issues or simply teething problems.

A common barrier to successful Change Management is that organisations often have a disjointed or informal approach, leaving individual areas to their own devices rather than providing a centralised and coordinated process. However, with NetSupport ServiceDesk’s ability to gather and share information, you will quickly see the benefits of introducing a structured Change Management system, with clearly defined reporting lines established.

There are two authorities in Change Management:

The Change Manager: In the first instance, a clearly identified Change Manager should be responsible for filtering, accepting and classifying incoming change requests and obtaining the appropriate sign-off by management. The Change Manager then plans and coordinates the implementation of the changes.

The Change Advisory Board (CAB): Establishing a CAB ensures each change request has the required visibility across all affected areas of the business. The CAB should meet regularly to assess, prioritise and plan changes. The Board’s membership is flexible but would typically include the Change Manager (Chair), representatives from IT Support and Problem Management team, business managers and user group reps, systems managers and possible suppliers.

Within NetSupport ServiceDesk, the members of each CAB can be pre-defined for each category of change request. Each member can also be assigned an appropriate ‘weighting’ to accommodate scenarios where only certain members need to approve the request.