The purpose of the Change Management process is to achieve the successful introduction of changes to an IT system or environment. Success is measured as a balance of the timeliness and completeness of change implementation, the cost of implementation, and the minimization of disruption caused in the target system or environment. The process also ensures that appropriate details of changes to IT resources (assets, CIs) are recorded.

Basically, a change is anything that alters the status of a configuration item (CI). This typically includes anything that adds to, deletes from, or modifies the IT environment. The definition of a change is the addition, modification or removal of approved, supported or baselined hardware, network, software, application, environment, system, desktop build or associated documentation.

A change request (for which RFC is an established synonym) is the means for documenting proposed change and actual change activity in IT resources or capabilities. Change requests can be triggered for a wide variety of reasons, from a wide variety of sources. Change requests can be concerned with any part of the infrastructure or with any service or activity.

Read the Change Management Key Concepts.

Important links

• Change Management Tool Mentors
• Tivoli® Open Process Automation Library Extensions for Change Management
• Implementing Change & Configuration Management
• IBM® Tivoli Change and Configuration Management Database

Outcomes

 As a result of the successful implementation of the Change Management process:

• Changes are introduced in a timely and controlled manner
• Proposed changes are not approved nor introduced without an accurate assessment of their costs and other effects
• Incidents resulting from the introduction of changes are minimized
• Service quality is measurably improved
• Appropriate balance is maintained between the business need to deploy innovation and the need to maintain the stability of IT service
  

Scope

Change Management typically begins with the creation of a Change Request (RFC). The change request documents details of the proposed change in order to support a range of business and technical assessments, leading to approval (or rejection) and ultimately to application of the change.

This process establishes classification and categorization schemes to assist with change assessment activities. It also defines the implementation approaches that will be assigned to approved changes in order to standardize the supervisory control levels, consistent with the assessment recommendations. ITIL®, in the context of managing production environments, uses the term change model for these schemes.  

Examples of change models:

• standard change
• emergency change

Some activities in the process require examination of several or all changes collectively rather than on an individual basis. For example, scheduling changes for implementation requires consideration of the other changes planned for the same dates and target environments in order to identify conflicts.

Includes

• Planned changes, standard changes (pre-approved by policy), and emergency changes (policy exception request)
• Establishing both recurring and one-time only schedules (change windows) during which changes can be performed without negatively affecting commitments, such as project schedules, projected availability, or SLA commitments
• Enforcement of standard methods and procedures from request for change through post implementation review
• Establishing regular meetings and communication schedules to evaluate proposed changes and schedules
• Control and management coordination of the implementation of those changes that are subsequently approved
• Maintenance of open channels of communications to promote smooth transition when changes take place
• Increased visibility and communication of changes to both business and support staff
  

Excludes

• Requirements Management (Stakeholder Requirements Management)
• Creation of new or revised functionality (Realization category processes)
• Building the packaging for the delivery of new or revised functionality (Release Management)
• Technical implementation, such as distribution, preparation, installation, and backout if necessary (Deployment Management)
• Configuration Management, although the interface to this process must be managed
• Asset Management, although the interface to this process must be managed
• Business transformation and organizational change (IT Customer Transformation Management)
• Change management within a development context (For that, see the Rational Unified Process)

Key Performance Indicators

• Customer satisfaction with
  • the timeliness and value of the change approval process
  • the timeliness, value, and quality of change implementation
• The elapsed time and direct costs
  • In this process domain
    • In each process step and between steps
• Business value of approved, rejected, and deferred changes
• Number of change requests
  • opened, closed, and pending
  • approved, rejected, or deferred
• Percent of emergency changes
• Percent of change requests needing revision
• Percent of approved changes
  • completed as planned and scheduled
  • rescheduled or delayed
  • backed out
• Percent of implementation tasks
  • that are automated
  • that fail
• Governance effectiveness - number & percent of changes implemented without change approval
• Number of Incidents due to
  • Approved changes
  • Non-approved changes

Relation to other processes

• Release Management - Changes authorized by Change Management may require a release to be created. Such changes go to Release Management to create the release. The release will then be deployed through Deployment Management.  
• Problem Management fixes the underlying root causes of faults using Change Requests to Change Management
• Configuration Management - When assessing a proposed change, this process can identify CIs that are affected by the change.  In addition, Configuration Management may provide other important information about the CIs involved.
• Availability Management, Capacity Management, Security Management and other processes enact enhancements to the infrastructure using Change Requests to Change Management. In addition, assessments of proposed changes are provided to Change Management
• Financial assessments of proposed changes (Financial Management) are provided to Change Management.
• The list of standard changes is defined by Change Management as part of the Change Management Framework.  This information is used by the Request Fulfillment to route standard changes to the appropriate process for implementation. 

Further reading

See "Change Management" in the ITIL documentation.

In addition, see the IBM Service Management Web page.