Change Management

When someone wants to implement a change, they create a change request in ServiceNow. The person who is responsible for implementing the change is usually, but not always, the “change owner”. A change can be requested by the change owner or someone else. The change can be one of four main types:

• Normal – the most general type of change. These changes go through the full risk assessment, approval, and scheduling process.
• Standard – low-risk, routine changes that are implemented nearly identically every time. Once the procedure is approved, they can be implemented without going through the standard approval process.
• Emergency – changes that must be implemented as soon as possible. These changes go through an expedited approval process.
• Expedited – changes that must be implemented outside of the normal approval process, but that are not emergencies.

The change manager and Change Approval Board (CAB) are notified of all change requests.

Each change request goes through an approval process. This process is different for each of the four change types.

There are two possible phases of approval, the “Assess” phase and the “Authorize” phase. Different change types go through different combinations of these phases.

Normal changes are first assessed by the supervisor of the change owner. If that person approves the change, it is then reviewed at the weekly Change Approval Board (CAB) meeting (see below for more details). The CAB reviews the risks of the change, ensures that the change owner has a plan in place to notify affected stakeholders, and ensures that records of the change are complete. Ideally, the change owner will be present at this meeting to answer any questions about the change. If the change is authorized by the CAB, it is moved on to the scheduling step.

Standard changes only go through the Authorization phase once. After a standard change “template” has been reviewed and authorized by the CAB, all subsequent changes that follow the procedures described in that template will automatically advance to the scheduling phase. Any changes to a standard change template need to be approved by a peer/manager and the CAB.

In some organizations, emergency changes must be approved by an emergency CAB. However, at NAU, in order to prioritize the resolution of incidents, emergency changes are usually approved after their implementation by the normal CAB. Change owners are encouraged to inform and/or coordinate with their managers on an emergency change, but the assessment phase is not formally required for this change type.  Emergency changes can be entered retroactively as change requests in ServiceNow. If this happens, the change is automatically advanced to the Review state.

Expedited changes do not require approval by the CAB. They only go through the Assess phase (in which they are reviewed by the director or the assignment group) before implementation.

Normal, standard, and expedited changes are scheduled for implementation on the change calendar. Emergency changes may not be placed on the calendar until after they are implemented, but the calendar can still be consulted to facilitate emergency changes. The main purpose of the change calendar is to ensure that changes don’t conflict with each other.

The approved change window at NAU is from 5:00 pm on Fridays until 11:59 pm on Sundays. Changes that happen outside of this window may generate a warning message within the change request. A person submitting a request is encouraged to explain the need for a change outside of the normal maintenance window within the request.

The CAB reviews the change calendar during its weekly meetings and reviews any caution periods that may be in effect during a proposed change. These caution periods are often related to the academic schedule, such as the first day of classes, midterm exams, finals week, etc. If you have important events that you would like to be included in the caution periods calendar, please contact the IT Service Management Office.

Every Friday, the change manager sends out an email to ITS directors, managers, service desk staff, and change owners that summarizes the approved changes for the upcoming change window.

After approval and scheduling, the change owner and/or team make the requested change.

The change request should then be updated with the result of the implementation. The result is described in a “close code” that will either be “Successful”, “Successful with issues”, or “Unsuccessful”.  There is a space for notes that give more details about the implementation result.

If there are issues, outages, or degradation caused by a change implementation, the implementer should contact the ITS Service Desk, use the ITS On-Call list, and communicate right away.  Prompt escalation can reduce the impact of outages.

In this stage, the change owner reviews the request record for accuracy. After the change has been reviewed, the change owner can move it to the closed state. The information about a change, from the request through the review stage, is recorded and stored for record-keeping purposes (audit, analysis, etc.).