Unit Standard
Title
Information Technology Services: Standard on Information Technology Change Management
Introduction
Purpose
The main goal of Change Management in the ITS Division is to make sure changes fit with business and school needs, while reducing impact and service problems. Change Management uses standard methods and procedures complying with the University Standard on IT Change Management to handle changes quickly and with as little effect on service quality as possible.
Scope
This standard applies to ITS employees and contractors performing changes to ITS systems and services.
Standard
This Standard explains the processes ITS uses for making changes, following the University IT Change Management Standard. Any changes to ITS systems made by ITS staff or contractors must follow the procedures set by the ITS Change Approval Advisory Board (CAB). The ITS CAB is responsible forhandles creating, implementing, and managing these processes to ensure they meet the University’s IT Change Management Standard and ISO 27002.
Types of Change
ITS recognizes four types of change to the IT environment:
- Operational Changes: day-to-day changes performed with no adverse customer or service impact, and no required outage.
- Standard changes: commonly performed changes with low customer and service impact. The tasks are well known. The risk is usually low and always well understood.
- Normal Changes: Normal Changes are changes with the potential for medium to high customer or service impact. The tasks may not be performed often and include risk that is less thoroughly understood than with a standard change.
- Emergency Changes: Interruption or degradation of client or internal-facing production services that were not planned or urgent change needed to prevent an interruption or degradation with minimal prior notice or restoration of services. Emergency changes require the endorsement of an ITS Executive Leadership Team member (CIO, Assistant or Associate Vice Chancellor or Executive Director).
Change Approval Board (CAB)
The Change Approval Board (CAB) reviews requested changes and helps in the assessment and prioritization of changes. CAB members are chosen by ITS senior leadership and include:
- Service owners/managers from ITS units,
- User support managers,
- Technical experts,
- Third parties and
- Customer representatives (if required).
The head of Customer Service & Engagement will:
- Foster diverse and effective representation, and
- Assign a staff liaison (Change Manager) to organize CAB activity.
The Change Manager will:
- Review proposed changes from both a technical and business perspective, seeking stakeholder impact as needed to ensure changes are evaluated in context,
- Organize and run the CAB meetings, and
- Determine the mechanisms to approve or reject changes.
Participation in CAB activities to provide feedback on changes should include representation from (or designees):
- Network Subject Matter Expert
- Application Development Subject Matter Expert
- Service Desk/Business Systems Help Desk Representative
- IT Operations Center Representative
- Server/Infrastructure Subject Matter Expert
- IT Security Subject Matter Expert (also representing privacy considerations)
- Business Relationship Manager(s)
- Service Owners/Managers
- Project/program managers
- Campus unit guests/participants as needed
CAB members must have a clear understanding of the customer business needs and the user community, as well as technical development, support functions, and environments.
The CAB will:
- Meet to review and as-required, approve change submissions,
- Review Emergency changes,
- Audit Standard changes,
- Define, manage, and document incident and outage process;
- Facilitate reliable change communications within ITS and to the campus community;
- Assess change risk by including appropriate stakeholders in the CAB membership;
- Assess separation of duties for change approval and implementation (CAB makes sure that the people who implement changes and the people who approve changes are different to the extent it’s necessary and possible;
- Ensure that all non-Operational changes are documented, and Standard and Normal changes are formally approved. Approval may be by consensus, in advance by defined templates for specific types of changes, by designated authorities or otherwise as defined by CAB;
- Review the Change management Process annually for continuous improvement opportunities; and
- Communicate approved changes according to defined processes.
Exceptions
Exceptions to this Standard may be made in writing by the Chief Information Officer or their delegate.
Due to quantity and need for design and other review for application development changes, ITS Enterprise Applications operates a parallel protocol involving requirements analysis, design, and quality review that addresses all change types. EA changes meeting this Standard’s Normal and Emergency definitions and certain elevated impact criteria also have a final step of ITS CAB review under this Standard.
Definitions
- Change: The addition, modification, or removal of anything that could affect IT services or the people who use them.
Related Requirements
External Regulations
Contact Information
Primary Contact
Name: ITS Policy Office
Email: its_policy@unc.edu