Change Freezes based around CI class

[tmcclure]

Interested in your thoughts about introducing Change days (or Freezes, depending on which way you look at it) based on Configuration Item type or Class.

For example management have proposed Server Changes (Hardware, Win OS, and Unix) to only be scheduled for Mondays and Thurdays, and Network and Application Changes for Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

The driver for this is a staff resourcing one. If possible changes are scheduled to occur outside business hours (business hours are 8am to 9pm) and because of this it makes sense to have the server guys working after hours for 2 nights a week and Application/Network for 2 nights a week (rather than all potentially working 5 nights a week)

I know some changes are interrelated and impact across the Server, Application environment, but leaving this out for the moment what are your thoughts?

We're a reasonably small shop and believe once the business has been conditioned to this schedule, it wouldn't have much of an impact on service delivery.

Any suggestions, concerns, etc would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Tom.

[fighter]

Tom,

In our organisation the change freeze is simply based on the services and SLA.

No change is allowed on production system during week days until and unless its an emergency/exception change.. This is to avoid any degradation in service level after the change during the week days. We mainly schedule the changes on friday evening and week ends.

We also enforce Change freezes during the time when the IT org's top management is out of town to prevent any major impact to the services due to any failed change.

Hope this helps!

Vimzie