QA/test results and Change Approvals

[ChangeOfficer]

Looking to improve our change request lead time and one of our barriers is that we currently require all testing to be successfully completed prior to change approval. This often leads to a delay in submitting a change request until testing is complete.

In theory we should be able to approve based on the test plan/strategy and then simply validate that signoff has been obtained. In reality this has been a tough sell as CAB stakeholders have been reluctant to approve requests with only the test strategy.

Anyone have a clean process for accomplishing this?

[Diarmid]

You have confused change approval with the approval to proceed to the next step.

It makes poor sense to do any work towards a change before approval for that change. CAB is not a good instrument to verify test results, and why should it?

CAB is interested in the reasons for the change, the impacts and risks of the change, the resourcing of the change, the establishment of the approach and the identification of completion criteria for the various stages to be fulfilled. So CAB should be approached when the necessary preparations for these items has been done. There may be circumstances in which CAB needs to meet again for a particular change, but those would be identified at the original meeting.
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