Change is the addition, modification, or removal of anything that could have a direct or indirect effect on services. The primary purpose of a Change Management process is to implement beneficial production changes while lowering risk and minimizing any disruption to business operations, thus ensuring the best possible levels of service quality and availability are maintained. In addition, communicating changes to potentially impacted units across campus is essential for success.
The long-term goal is for all IT changes across the University to be logged in ServiceNow. Today, the following technical units are participating in the central Change Management process (i.e., utilizing ServiceNow for technical change requests):
ServiceNow is the system of record (SoR) for the creation and cataloging of technical changes, as well as configuration items and services. It also provides the technical framework and workflows. In addition, ServiceNow provides the platform for weekly CAB meetings, as well as the document repository for change management knowledge base (KB) articles.
The purpose of the CAB is to evaluate normal change requests scheduled for implementation and approve/reject each request. Evaluations consider:
CAB Membership and Meeting
The following campus units are current CAB participants:
A Standard Change is a low-risk, pre-authorized change that is well-understood, fully documented, and can be implemented without needing additional authorization.
Examples
Escalation to a Normal Change Request
Required Notification / Approvals
Required Documentation
A high-priority change requires the bypassing of the normal change process in order to mitigate a production issue in the shortest possible time. Emergency changes fall within one of the following categories:
Examples
Required Notification / Approvals
Required Documentation
A Normal Change is a change that is not an emergency change or a standard change. Normal changes follow the defined steps of the change management process.
Examples
When scheduling the anticipated start and end times for a change (in particular, a Normal change), this period should cover not only implementing the change but also the time needed to complete all necessary validations. This way, if a change needs to be backed out, the appropriate Close Code can be selected. If a person closes a change prior to validations being completed and an issues arise, they will be unable to make adjustments in ServiceNow.
Example Scenario: A change is scheduled from 8 am Sunday morning to 8 pm Sunday evening. This period is deemed needed to implement the change and have various teams conduct smoke checks, validations, etc. If, at 6 pm, issues are detected, the POC can then back out the change and select “Unsuccessful” as the Close Code.
Change Type | Required Lead Time |
---|---|
Standard | No lead time is necessary |
Emergency | No lead time is necessary |
Normal |
1 week from CAB approval |
Note: Lead times are based on calendar days, not business days
A critical component of managing changes in ServiceNow is the calculation of risk. The risk level is directly correlated to lead time. Several factors are used to evaluate risk. Some factors may affect only the specific change type.
Standard Changes
Risk is calculated during template creation. Currently, the number of users will help calculate the risk for standard changes.
Emergency and Normal Changes
Risk is calculated when the user clicks the "Calculate Risk" button after saving the initial record (see training documentation). The risk calculation elements for these changes include: