Home 
 1. Overview 
 What is Change Management?  
 Why use Change Management? 
 Who uses Change Management?  
 How Change Management works  
 What does Change Management cost?  
 2. Implementation guide  
 Define what needs to be done 
 Prepare to implement 
 Implement 
 Review the implementation 
 Implementation resources  
 3. Operations guide  
 What needs to be done?  
 When does it need doing?  
 Who does it?  
 Operational resources  
 4. Toolkit  
 Examples  
 Templates  
 5. Roles and responsibilities  
 Originator  
 Initial approver  
 Peer reviewer  
 Implementer  
 Final approver  
 Change manager  
 6. Review of Change Management  
 Recap of Change Management  
 Checklist  
What needs to be done?
Creating and approving Requests for Change Communicating changes Monitoring the Change Management process Making decisions
The ongoing operational tasks for change management are:


Go back to Operations guide
Creating and approving Requests for Change
A request for change should be completed for each change affecting the ICT infrastructure. 

The request for change steps described in the implementation guide can be followed each time until everyone is familiar with the process and it becomes automatic. 

Communicating changes
It is a good idea to communicate planned changes to the ICT users, especially if system downtime is required.  This communication can take the form of a regular documented summary of approvals and rejections, which may be distributed or pinned to notice boards. 

Alternatively it may be more appropriate for the ICT technical support department to issue notification of downtime and impact specifically for each change to give appropriate warning.  A combination of both methods is better if time permits.

Change communications should have a standard format with a clear layout so that readers can pick out relevant information quickly.  See our example for ideas.

It is also important that the service desk is made aware of change plans in advance of their being implemented.  This will help the service desk to recognise related incidents if they occur and to deal with them efficiently and effectively. 
Monitoring the Change Management process
It is important to quickly start to take regular measurements against all processes to plot how things change over time.  When Change Management has been implemented, the following measurements should be easy to gather and report on using the information on the request for change forms:
    • total number of requests for change
    • number of approved requests for change
    • number of rejected requests for change
    • number of successfully implemented changes
    • number of failed changes.

It is often worth while to publish reports on notice boards and/or issue them to key staff.  This gives visibility of the workload of the department.  But bear in mind that fluctuations will probably generate some questions, so understand the causes before you go public.

To get started on some simple measurements and reporting download a change management report template with graphs produced in Excel. Follow the instructions to fill in your volumes of requests for change and set the print range around the commentary and graphs before printing.
Making decisions
The reports produced from the Change Management process output will enable you to monitor trends and look more closely for reasons for noticeable fluctuation. We give below some possible examples.
  • A change in the volume of requests for change being raised may indicate growing or reducing problems, or a growth in need for ICT systems in general.
  • A fluctuation in the volumes of approved or rejected requests for change may indicate difficulties in operating the Change Management process itself or it may be relative to the fluctuating number of requests for change.
  • A fluctuation in the number of successful or failed changes may indicate issues with the planning process or may be relative to the number of requests for change.

The measurements you have gathered are to give an indication of areas in which to look for problems; they are not a solution in themselves.  Identify trends and ask questions, look back through incident records, talk to the service desk staff.  Dig around for the root cause. It is also important to identify and resolve issues with the process to ensure that the process continues to operate effectively.
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