Change Notification Responsabilities

[martyboy]

Hi there,

My organisation as in discussions about who has ultimate responsability to send (email in my case) notifications to clients of ucomming changes?

We do have a CCB and a Change Manager. We also have an ITIL based Service Desk (which I am responsible for).

the Change Manager and I are both of the opinion that the Notification emails should be sent from the service desk as the service desk is the central point of contact and information for all.
However there is a thought that this responsability should fall with the Change Owners as they are intimately involved with the actual change, its schedule and any last minute show stoppers etc.

What are your thoughts?
Thanks in advance.
Martyboy

[Ed]

Hi Martyboy

The answer here is, as per usual, ' it depends'

if you are just dealing with internal customers, then I can see there is a reasonable case for the way you are doing it.

In our case, as a solutions provider, we actually use a mix of my Change Management Team sending mails out to Customer's Change Managers, and Customer Account/Service Managers sending mails out to Customers without CM systems. This is dependent on the Change itself.

Here, we as Change Management, have all the details as to when the Change goes into live, and we authorise when it will take place. So we should be sending out the info, even if it is only via the Forward Schedule of Change. The critical point is when to involve the Account/Service Managers for spreading the info.

Regards

Ed

[CoolCat]

Previously in my change management function:

Change Management was also responsible to supply the communication of upcoming changes to the Service Delivery Managers (Internal).
(FSC updates included to SD)

The SDM's were ultimatley responsible for client communication - the SDM's could use the Service Desk to send out communications to their respective clients.

[UKVIKING]

The notification can come from change management but through the service desk

for example

I used to send notices as change manager for scheduled maintenance. The send email was the service desk and they were asked to contact the serivce desk

then the sd would pass the work to me
_________________
John Hardesty
ITSM Manager's Certificate (Red Badge)

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

[dboylan]

It might help to think of this from the end users perspective. You say that you are in an ITIL based Service Desk environment. I assume that you mean that management has been trying to funnel all non-service level types of communications for IT through the Service Desk.

So... I am an end user doing my job and, because I don't negotiate pricing or Service Levels, I am communicating everything to IT through the Service Desk. All of a sudden I get a Change notification that will affect my job from some other (perhaps unknown) party in IT. Who do I call? The sender of the message? My boss who is responsible for negotiating Service Levels so he can take it up with Service Level Management? The Service Desk, who didn't appear knowledgeable enough about this issue to send the message themselves?

I'm sooo confused!?!?!

The idea embedded in ITIL is that there are two points of entry for the end user into the IT Kingdom. One is to negotiate costs and Service Levels. That is Service Level Management. The other point of entry is for everything else. That is the Service Desk.

To send a message from a source other than these two entry points is inviting confusion.

I would recommend that any non-Service Level/Pricing communication come from the Service Desk. Of course your mileage may vary (I hope that colloquialism translates to other cultures).

Don