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Summary
Change Enablement practices are designed to reduce incidents. The practices aim to ensure efficient and prompt handling of changes to IT infrastructure and code. Whether rolling out new services, managing existing ones, or resolving problems in code, Change Enablement provides context and transparency, helps to avoid bottlenecks, and minimizes risk.
The purpose of the change Enablement practice is to maximize the number of successful service and product changes by ensuring that risks have been properly assessed, authorizing changes to proceed, and managing the change schedule. (Axelos, 2019).
A secondary, yet critical, goal is to balance quality Change Enablement practices without unnecessary procedural bottlenecks for ET&S service providers.
Questions
Q1 - What Constitutes a change?
Q2 - Why "Change Enablement" rather than "Change Management"?
Q3 - What are the types, or categories of changes?
Q4 - What is the CAB and what does it do?
Q5 - How do I view the Change Calendar?
Q6 - What kind of change should I request?
Q7 - How do I submit a Request for Change (RFC)?
Answers
A1 - What Constitutes a change?
- A change is the addition, modification, or removal of anything that could have a direct or indirect effect on IT services.
- Back to Questions
A2 - Why "Change Enablement" rather than "Change Management"?
- The term Change Enablement will be used instead of Change Management, to differentiate ET&S Change Enablement from organizational change management and ERP’s Change Management program.
- Back to Questions
A3 - What are the types, or categories of changes?
- Standard Change - also called "pre-approved" or "PAS" (Pre-Approved Standard) change - are low-risk, pre-approved changes which are fully documented and have a history of success. Standard changes are initially normal changes which require a full risk assessment and approval by the CAB. Once approved, they may be scheduled without CAB approval or formal risk assessment.
- Emergency Changes must be implemented as soon as possible, for example, to resolve a major incident or implement a security patch.
- Normal Changes are non-emergency changes without a defined, pre-approved processes. They require risk assessment and CAB approval.
- Normal Expedited Changes are normal changes which are at a higher risk than usual due to a short lead time.
- Informational Events are either not changes at all (e.g. campus schedule information) or are insignificant changes to the development or test environment.
- Back to Questions
A4 - What is the CAB and what does it do?
- The Change Advisory Board (or Change Approval Board) is responsible for reviewing and approving all changes to the live environment so as to reduce risk, increase visibility, and minimize conflict. The CAB meets every Wednesday at 1:00 PM and is represented by each ET&S team.
- Use this link to join the CAB meeting at 1PM on Wednesday or download the CAB meeting series calendar invitation to add all weekly CAB meetings to your Outlook calendar.
- Back to Questions
A5 - How do I view the Change Calendar?
- The change calendar can be viewed from the Change Enablement Application in TeamDynamix.
Step 1 - Click the Home icon button at the top left of the TDx Work Management (TDNext) window.
Step 2 - Use the drop-down at the top of the screen, "Change Enablement - Change Calendar".
A6 - What kind of change should I request?
A7 - How do I submit a Request for Change (RFC)?
- Follow these instructions to submit a Request for Change (RFC):
Step 1 - Log into TDx Work Management (TDNext)
Step 2 - Under the View Applications button open the Change Enablement Application.
Step 3 - Choose Request for Change at the top of the screen.
Further Readings
TeamDynamix: Change Enablement User Guide
Change Enablement: Adding Change Calendar to Outlook (ETS Internal)
Change Enablement Service Catalog Page
USNH Change Enablement SOP (PDF)
Change Type Quick Reference (PDF) info graphic
Request for Change Quick Reference (PDF)
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