1. WHAT IS A CHANGE

A change is anything that adds to the service, modifies the service, or removed from the products and services. It can directly or indirectly affect the products and services.

Products and services may include applications, infrastructures, documentations, processes, or vendor management.

2. PRE-REQUISITE FOR CHANGE

Change can affect customers or end users in various ways.

  • The change control must ensure that every change provides additional value.
  • The risks and benefits must be evaluated prior the change.
  • All proposed change must be approved by change authority before implementations and deployments.

3. TYPES OF CHANGE

3.1       STANDARD CHANGE  
Standard changes are low risk changes which are pre-authorized. Pre-authorized means there is no additional approval required for the change. Example of standard changes are service requests (SR) and operational changes. If the change required modification of AS-IS procedures, risk assessment should be carried out.

3.2       NORMAL CHANGE
Normal change requires scheduling, risk assessments, and authorization. Changes can be low risk, medium risk, or high risk. For low risk changes, minimal approval might be required. Often, automation could be used. For example, continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD). For medium to high risk changes, it could evolve up to senior management or the change board. To initial a normal change, change request (CR) is created.

3.3       EMERGENCY CHANGE
Emergency change requires immediate attention and implementation. Such changes should still undergo risk assessments, testing and approvals. However, documentation of such change can be done after change is completed. Emergency change includes resolving an incident or performing security patches.

4. CHANGE SCHEDULE

Change schedule is used to plan changes, avoid conflicts, allocate resources, and establish communication. It provides details required for incident management, problem management, and plan improvements. Change must be communicated or broadcasted before implementation.

5. PURPOSE OF CHANGE CONTROL

Change control is an organizational practice that assesses the risk of the change, authorize the change, and manage the change schedule. This ensures that every change is implemented successfully.

Change control is part of organizational change enablement (previously known as change management).

6. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CHANGE CONTROL & CHANGE ENABLEMENT

The key difference is change enablement focused on people aspects of the change. It ensures the change is implemented successfully through proper management. Change control focus on the changes made to product and services.

7. CHANGE AUTHORITY MANAGEMENT

Change authority can be centralized or decentralized. High velocity organization might have decentralized change authority where peer reviews are authorized for efficiency. For each type of change, right change authority must be assigned.