Handling Changes that results in several activities

[Right]

Hi all,
Which is better:
- Opening a separate "Change" Request for every activity that resulted from a MAIN activity. (Basically, we end up with many Changes)

Or

- Opening one Change for the single activity and opening (sub-)tasks under this Change for every individual activity that resulted from the MAIN? (We end up with One Change which contains sub-tasks).

Assuming that the MAIN activity does not introduce any outage, however at least one task introduces an outage, which one do you think it is better from your experience and practices.

Thanks for your help.

[Diarmid]

This is an entirely practical matter and the best way to do it can only be determined through an understanding of your own management processes, what their capabilities and limitations are.

Essentially you have to decide how to use Release Management and Change Management according to circumstances. There can be no abstract rule for making such a practical decision and different approaches will suit different situations even within the one organization.

After all, most changes, however simple, requires a series of actions some of which could technically be defined as changes in their own right. Only you can define the granularity that suits you.
_________________
"Method goes far to prevent trouble in business: for it makes the task easy, hinders confusion, saves abundance of time, and instructs those that have business depending, both what to do and what to hope."
William Penn 1644-1718

[Right]

Thanks Diarmid - sounds logical and meaningful to me.

[UKVIKING]

Right

Your question is more a tool question than a CM question. The real answer is it depends.

How is your CM process defined
How is the tool defined ?
Does the tool support parent / child CM Forms

A Change request is a set of actions in order to accomplish something. There may be 1 activity or 100 activities as part of that change

The responsibility is on the deployment manager, the writer of the CR and the standards as to implementation document, etc
_________________
John Hardesty
ITSM Manager's Certificate (Red Badge)

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

[Right]

Thank UKVIKING. Yes - it is a tool question. We are using a CM tool that provides "Tasks" under a "Change" request. We just want to use it, but we are checking if someone else has used it and would it be good practice..etc.

Regards,

[BorisBear]

Its the second one.