Inclusion of all changes in the CM process

[Patrickzim]

This is my first post in this forum. I am wondering what strategies some of you in the forum may have used to widen the scope of the changes included/documented in your CM process.

Typically, the changes that are entered into our system are changes that will have some impact on service availability or have some operational requirements for implementation. Our sense is that there are a lot of undocumented changes that are implemented and our experience tells us that some of those changes do cause incidents.

We are thinking through a couple of strategies to get these changes into the process; such as beginning a standard change process, which would include abbreviated entry of data in the RFC (simplifying the process), the use of Service Catalogs and service requests (as opposed to email, phone) to drive work and therefore drive the changes. Either of these will take some time for adoption/implementation.

There are some large issues in managing/implementing either of those strategies and that's why I am wondering if there are others strategies or "lessons learned" in doing this.

[skeptic]

perhaps I'm being simplistic, but I would say define what needs a change by the CI that is changed. if it changes one of these CIs in any way, it needs an RFC. Start with a critical set of CIs, then increase the scope.
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