RFC, impact analysis, etc.

[asrilrm]

Hi, it's me again. I think I'm making significant progress on setting Change Management for my office. Yet there are still some questions that would need inputs.

1. How does Change Management deal with RFC in real practice? In some reference, I read that Change Manager and CAB gather once a week to review RFCs to determine their categories and priorities. I cannot understand how does this comply to time based priority.
For example, if today there was a CAB meeting and the next meeting is scheduled next week. What would happen to an RFC that comes tomorrow? Will it have to wait until next week to be processed?

2. About impact analysis specifically about cost-benefit calculation.
If an RFC comes from a project, assuming that business analysis has been done by the project. Does the business impact need to be calculated again by the Change Management Team? Or they can skip and only analyze technical impacts?

3. Is the Change Management Team responsible of coordinating the socialisation of an implemented change on the user side? As far as I know the implementation project should take the responsibility but I could be wrong. Especially when it comes to internal socialisation.


Thanks in advance,
Asril Malasan

[asrilrm]

I keep on waiting but up to now no answer.
I wonder, did I ask dumb questions?
Could be, but I really need directions
Please ...

[Mark-OLoughlin]

Hi,

1) You should have lead times on changes. CHnages submitted before sucha date will be reviered by CM and or CAB. If submitted after such a date they may be reviewed or pushed out until next CAB id the CM cannot apporve.
This is to ensure that changes are submitted in a timely fashion to allow you time to review and give an approval decision.

20 Depends, but I would say yes it should. Reason is that a project can be made up of many individual changes. The project was approved based on the impact of the project as a whol eand not the individual changes. Each change may have a different impact, some may have no impact. Also individual changes will feed into the FSC which will aler people to the changes, time of changes and impact of the individual changes. Project changes may happen over a period also.

3) Depends. Project Management may do this to the wider community. Change Manager should do this via the FSC which should have business owners receiving it so they can inform their units. Service Desk should be aware of the activity from the FSC to ensure they know whats going on.

I hope some of this helps.

[andy1971]

Judging by your questions and suggested answers I think you are looking at ITIL as some sort of prescripted series of activities that you must implement in a specific sequence to become "ITIL compliant".

Change management is about managing the risk associated with change. You need to identify your risks and then deliver something that mitigates these. Taking point 1 above. If you have a RFC that is time critical, then implement an emergency change process. If time is not a problem then maybe the best solution would be to wait six days for the next meeting of the CAB. If your changes are relatively low risk, you may not even want to refer your change to the CAB, and deliver the change with a different level of scrutiny.

Remember - ITIL is there for you to help manage your risks. You apply a level of rigour approriate to your risks. Don't assume that because you have read that someone has suggested something that this is appropriate to your organisation.

Maybe not the answer you wanted to see, but an honest one.

[asrilrm]

Hi Mark and Andy,

Really appreciate your replies. I highly appreciate them.
To Andy's suggestion, the idea did come into my mind, but the difficulty is that everyone, even internal, tend to think that every single change request is urgent and demanded full attention.
I see the Change Management team vulnerable to subjective judgement of their performance. And tricky is how to obtain full support (I mean real full support, not lip service) from the management regarding this matter.

Cheers,
Asril Malasan

[UKVIKING]

The change management process should be governed by a policy. A policy that should be known to all users

The policy should explicitly state the various change models

and the associated priorities and the method and ownership of the process for making things urgent.
_________________
John Hardesty
ITSM Manager's Certificate (Red Badge)

Change Management is POWER & CONTROL. /....evil laughter