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Understanding the ITIL Change Definition: A Comprehensive Guide

Change is an inevitable part of any organization’s growth and progress, and in the realm of IT, it is no different. In order to effectively

Nathan Gelber

August 15, 2023

Change is an inevitable part of any organization’s growth and progress, and in the realm of IT, it is no different. In order to effectively manage and control these changes, the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) has defined a comprehensive framework known as the ITIL Change Definition. This framework provides organizations with the necessary guidelines and best practices to ensure that changes are implemented smoothly and with minimal disruption to the overall IT services.

In essence, the ITIL Change Definition can be described as a set of processes and procedures that govern the planning, execution, and evaluation of any changes made within an IT environment. This includes changes to hardware, software, networks, configurations, and even organizational structures. By adhering to these defined processes, organizations can minimize the risks associated with changes, increase the efficiency of their IT operations, and ultimately deliver better services to their customers.

Table of Contents

The Importance of ITIL Change Definition

Change is an integral part of any organization, and effective change management is crucial for ensuring smooth transitions and minimizing disruptions. The ITIL Change Definition plays a vital role in this regard, as it provides organizations with a structured approach to manage and control changes within their IT environment.

One of the key reasons why the ITIL Change Definition is important is because it helps organizations reduce downtime. By following the defined processes, organizations can identify potential risks and plan for them accordingly, minimizing the chances of unexpected disruptions. This not only ensures continuity of IT services but also enhances the overall stability of the IT infrastructure.

Another crucial aspect of the ITIL Change Definition is its ability to improve service delivery. By implementing a standardized approach to change management, organizations can ensure that changes are thoroughly evaluated and approved before implementation. This helps prevent unauthorized or poorly planned changes that may negatively impact the quality of IT services. Ultimately, this leads to higher customer satisfaction and increased trust in the organization’s ability to deliver reliable IT solutions.

Reducing Downtime and Enhancing Stability

Minimizing downtime is a top priority for any organization, as it directly impacts productivity and customer satisfaction. The ITIL Change Definition helps achieve this by providing a systematic approach to change management. By identifying potential risks and planning for them in advance, organizations can proactively address any issues that may arise during the implementation of changes.

The ITIL Change Definition emphasizes the importance of thorough change assessment and authorization. This means that all proposed changes are carefully evaluated to determine their potential impact on the IT environment. By involving relevant stakeholders and subject matter experts in the decision-making process, organizations can ensure that changes are approved only after considering all relevant factors. This reduces the chances of unauthorized or poorly planned changes that may lead to system failures or service disruptions.

Furthermore, the ITIL Change Definition encourages organizations to implement change management controls and checkpoints. These controls help monitor the progress of changes and ensure that they are implemented as planned. By having a clear understanding of the expected outcomes and regularly reviewing the implementation process, organizations can identify any deviations or issues early on and take corrective actions, thereby minimizing the risk of downtime and maintaining the stability of their IT infrastructure.

Improving Service Delivery

Delivering high-quality services is a key objective for any organization, and the ITIL Change Definition plays a vital role in achieving this goal. By implementing standardized processes and procedures, organizations can ensure that changes are thoroughly evaluated and approved before implementation, reducing the chances of service disruptions or degradation.

The ITIL Change Definition emphasizes the need for a well-defined change assessment process. This process involves evaluating proposed changes based on predefined criteria, such as impact analysis, risk assessment, and business justification. By conducting a comprehensive assessment, organizations can determine the potential impact of changes on the IT infrastructure and make informed decisions regarding their implementation.

Additionally, the ITIL Change Definition promotes the use of a Change Advisory Board (CAB) to review and approve changes. The CAB consists of representatives from various departments and stakeholders who possess the necessary expertise to assess the potential impact of changes on different aspects of the organization. By involving key stakeholders in the decision-making process, organizations can ensure that changes are aligned with business objectives and that the potential risks associated with them are adequately mitigated.

Moreover, the ITIL Change Definition emphasizes the importance of effective communication and coordination during the implementation of changes. By keeping all relevant parties informed about the planned changes and their potential impact, organizations can minimize confusion and ensure a smooth transition. This proactive approach to communication not only helps manage expectations but also fosters collaboration and cooperation among different teams, ultimately improving the overall service delivery.

Key Components of ITIL Change Definition

The ITIL Change Definition comprises several key components that work together to ensure effective change management within an organization’s IT environment. These components provide a structured approach to plan, execute, and evaluate changes, allowing organizations to minimize risks and maximize the benefits associated with change.

Change Identification

The first component of the ITIL Change Definition is change identification. This involves identifying and documenting the need for change within the IT environment. It is essential to have a clear understanding of the reasons behind the proposed change and its expected outcomes.

During the change identification phase, organizations should consider factors such as business requirements, technological advancements, regulatory changes, and customer feedback. By systematically analyzing these factors, organizations can determine whether a change is necessary and whether it aligns with the overall goals and objectives of the organization.

Change Assessment

Once a change has been identified, the next step is to assess its potential impact on the IT environment. Change assessment involves evaluating the risks, benefits, and costs associated with the proposed change.

Risk assessment plays a crucial role in the change assessment phase. Organizations need to identify and evaluate the potential risks that may arise from implementing the change. This includes assessing the impact on existing systems, potential disruptions to ongoing operations, and any dependencies or interdependencies that may be affected.

Furthermore, organizations should also consider the potential benefits and costs associated with the change. This includes evaluating the expected improvements in efficiency, scalability, and customer satisfaction, as well as the financial implications of implementing the change.

Change Authorization

Once the change has been assessed, it needs to go through a formal authorization process. Change authorization involves obtaining approval from the appropriate stakeholders and ensuring that the change aligns with the organization’s overall objectives and priorities.

The Change Advisory Board (CAB) plays a crucial role in the change authorization process. The CAB consists of representatives from various departments and stakeholders who possess the necessary expertise to assess the potential impact of changes on different aspects of the organization. By involving key stakeholders in the decision-making process, organizations can ensure that changes are thoroughly evaluated and approved before implementation.

During the change authorization phase, organizations should also consider any dependencies or interdependencies that may be affected by the change. This includes assessing the potential impact on other ongoing projects, systems, or services and ensuring that appropriate contingency plans are in place to mitigate any potential risks.

Change Implementation

Once the change has been authorized, it can proceed to the implementation phase. Change implementation involves executing the planned changes within the IT environment while minimizing disruptions to ongoing operations.

During the change implementation phase, organizations should follow the predefined processes and procedures to ensure that the changes are implemented as planned. This includes coordinating with relevant teams, conducting necessary tests and validations, and ensuring that all required resources are available.

It is crucial to have effective communication and coordination during the implementation phase. By keeping all relevant parties informed about the planned changes and their potential impact, organizations can minimize confusion and ensure a smooth transition. This proactive approach to communication not only helps manage expectations but also fosters collaboration and cooperation among different teams.

Change Evaluation

The final component of the ITIL Change Definition is change evaluation. Change evaluation involves assessing the effectiveness of the implemented changes and capturing lessons learned for future improvements.

During the change evaluation phase, organizations should measure the actual outcomes of the changes against the expected outcomes. This includes evaluating the impact on key performance indicators, customer satisfaction, and overall service delivery. By conducting a comprehensive evaluation, organizations can identify any deviations or issues and take corrective actions if necessary.

Furthermore, organizations should also capture lessons learned during the change evaluation phase. This includes documenting any challenges faced, best practices identified, and recommendations for future changes. By systematically capturing and sharing these insights, organizations can continuously improve their change management processes and enhance their overall IT service delivery.

Types of Changes Covered by ITIL

The ITIL Change Definition categorizes changes into different types, each requiring a specific level of scrutiny, approval, and implementation. These change types help organizations differentiate between routine changes, emergency changes, and significant changes, enabling them to apply appropriate processes and controls based on the nature and impact of the change.

Standard Changes

Standard changes refer to routine changes that have been pre-authorized and follow a well-defined process. These changes are low-risk and have a predictable impact on the IT environment. Examples of standard changes include routine software updates, hardware replacements, and configuration changes that have been tested and documented.

Standard changes are typically pre-approved, which means that they do not require the same level of scrutiny and approval as other change types. This allows organizations to streamline the implementation of routine changes and focus their resources on more complex or high-risk changes.

Emergency Changes

Emergency changes are changes that need to be implemented

Emergency changes are changes that need to be implemented immediately to address critical issues or incidents that pose a significant risk to the IT environment or business operations. These changes are unplanned and require immediate attention to prevent further damage or disruptions.

Emergency changes often bypass the regular change management process due to their urgent nature. However, it is important to ensure that appropriate controls and documentation are still in place to minimize the risk of unintended consequences. Organizations should have a clear process for evaluating and approving emergency changes, as well as mechanisms for tracking and reviewing these changes after implementation.

Significant Changes

Significant changes are changes that have a high impact on the IT environment and require careful evaluation and planning. These changes may have significant implications for the organization’s operations, infrastructure, or services, and therefore, they require a more rigorous assessment and approval process.

Examples of significant changes include major system upgrades, infrastructure overhauls, or changes that affect critical business processes. These changes often involve multiple stakeholders and require extensive testing, risk analysis, and coordination. The approval process for significant changes usually involves a higher level of scrutiny, involving key decision-makers and subject matter experts to ensure that the change aligns with strategic objectives and is well-managed to mitigate potential risks.

The Change Advisory Board (CAB)

The Change Advisory Board (CAB) is a crucial component of the ITIL Change Definition. It is responsible for assessing and approving changes, ensuring that they align with the organization’s objectives and minimizing any potential risks. The CAB plays a crucial role in ensuring that changes are thoroughly evaluated, documented, and authorized before they are implemented.

Role and Responsibilities of the CAB

The CAB is typically composed of representatives from various departments and stakeholders who possess the necessary expertise to evaluate changes from different perspectives. The board may include members from IT operations, development teams, business units, and other relevant functions. The diverse composition of the CAB ensures that proposed changes are evaluated from technical, operational, and business perspectives.

The role of the CAB is to review proposed changes, assess their potential impact, and make informed decisions regarding their approval. The board evaluates changes based on predefined criteria, such as the potential impact on the IT infrastructure, alignment with business objectives, and risk analysis. The CAB also considers any dependencies or interdependencies that may be affected by the change and ensures that appropriate contingency plans are in place.

Furthermore, the CAB is responsible for ensuring that all necessary documentation and information related to the change are available and accurate. This includes change requests, impact assessments, risk analysis reports, and any other relevant documentation that helps in the decision-making process. The board also ensures that appropriate communication and coordination are in place to facilitate the successful implementation of approved changes.

Decision-Making Process of the CAB

The decision-making process of the CAB involves a systematic evaluation of proposed changes based on predefined criteria. The process typically includes the following steps:

1. Submission of Change Requests

Individuals or teams within the organization submit change requests to the CAB for evaluation. These change requests provide details about the proposed change, including its nature, purpose, potential impact, and any associated risks or dependencies.

2. Pre-Assessment and Documentation

Prior to the CAB meeting, the change requests undergo a pre-assessment process. This involves reviewing the completeness and accuracy of the information provided, ensuring that all necessary documentation and analysis reports are available, and identifying any missing information that may be required for the evaluation process.

3. CAB Meeting

The CAB meeting is a forum where the proposed changes are discussed and evaluated. The board members review the change requests, analyze the potential impact, assess the risks, and consider any dependencies or interdependencies that may be affected by the change. The meeting provides an opportunity for stakeholders to ask questions, seek clarifications, and share their expertise or concerns related to the proposed changes.

4. Decision-Making and Approval

Based on the discussions and evaluations during the CAB meeting, the board makes informed decisions regarding the approval of changes. The decisions may include approving the change as proposed, requesting modifications to the change, deferring the change for further evaluation, or rejecting the change due to identified risks or conflicts with organizational objectives.

5. Communication and Implementation

Once the CAB approves a change, the decision is communicated to the relevant stakeholders. The implementation process is then initiated, following the predefined processes and procedures for change execution. The CAB ensures that appropriate coordination, communication, and monitoring mechanisms are in place to support the successful implementation of approved changes.

Change Management Tools and Technologies

Technology plays a vital role in streamlining change management processes and enabling organizations to effectively implement the ITIL Change Definition. Various tools and technologies are available to support organizations in their change management endeavors, providing automation, centralization, and enhanced visibility into the change lifecycle.

Change Management Software

Change management software is specifically designed to streamline and automate the change management process. These tools provide a centralized platform for capturing, tracking, and managing change requests, approvals, and implementation details. They typically offer features such as workflow automation, document management, collaboration capabilities, and reporting functionalities.

Change management software enables organizations to standardize and streamline their change management processes, ensuring consistent application of the ITIL Change Definition. It helps in documenting and tracking all relevant information related to changes, including change requests, impact assessments, risk analysis reports, and approval details. This centralized repository of information provides a holistic view of the change lifecycle and facilitates effective decision-making and communication.

Automation Tools

Automation tools play a crucial role in reducing manual effort and improving the efficiency of change management processes. These tools automate repetitive tasks, such as change request routing, notifications, and status updates, freeing up resources to focus on more value-added activities.

Automation tools can also help organizations enforce predefined workflows and approval processes, ensuring that changes follow the defined procedures. They can automate the enforcement of change policies, such as mandatory risk assessments or approvals from specific stakeholders, reducing the chances of human error or oversight.

Configuration Management Databases (CMDB)

A Configuration Management Database (CMDB) is a centralized repository that stores information about an organization’s IT assets, configurations, and relationships. CMDBs are commonly used in IT service management, including change management, to provide a comprehensive view of the IT infrastructure and its interdependencies.

A CMDB can be integrated with change management tools to provide accurate and up-to-date information about the configuration items (CIs) that may be impacted by a proposed change. This helps in conducting impact assessments, identifying potential risks, and ensuring that appropriate approvals are obtained. The CMDB also facilitates effective communication and coordination among teams involved in the change management process.

Challenges and Best Practices in Implementing ITIL Change Definition

Implementing the ITIL Change Definition can be a complex endeavor, as it involves changes to processes, culture, and organizational dynamics. Organizations may face various challenges during the implementation process, but by adopting best practices, they can overcome these challenges and ensure the successful adoption of the ITIL Change Definition.

Resistance to Change

One of the common challenges in implementing the ITIL Change Definition is resistance to change. Change can disrupt established routines and may face resistance from individuals or teams who are comfortable with the existing processes or reluctant to embrace new ways of working.

To overcome resistance to change, organizations should invest in change management activities. This includes effectively communicating the reasons for change, the benefits it brings, and the potential risks of not changing. Involving key stakeholders early in the process, addressing their concerns and providing training and support can help in easing the transition and gaining buy-in from individuals and teams.

Lack of Awareness and Understanding

Another challenge organizations may face is a lack of awareness or understanding of the ITIL Change Definition. This can hinder the successful implementation of the framework, as individuals and teams may not fully grasp the purpose and benefits of the defined processes and procedures.

To address this challenge, organizations should invest in comprehensive training and education programs. This includes providing clear and concise information about the ITIL Change Definition, its objectives, and the expected outcomes. Training should be tailored to different roles and responsibilities, ensuring that individuals understand their specific contributions to the change management process.

Inadequate Resources and Support

Implementing the ITIL Change Definition requires adequate resources, both in terms of personnel and technology. Many organizations face challenges in allocating the necessary resources or may lack the required expertise or tools to effectively implement the defined processes.

To overcome this challenge, organizations should conduct a thorough assessment of their resource requirements and allocate resources accordingly. This may involve hiring or training personnel with the necessary skills, investing in technology tools that support change management processes, and establishing clear roles and responsibilities for individuals involved in the change management process.

Lack of Continuous Improvement

Change is an ongoing process, and organizations should continuously evaluate and improve their change management practices. However, many organizations struggle with maintaining the momentum and ensuring that change management processes are regularly reviewed and enhanced.

To address this challenge, organizations should establish mechanisms for continuous improvement. This includes regularly reviewing and evaluating the effectiveness of the defined processes, capturing lessons learned from previous changes, and implementing changes based on the identified areas of improvement. Encouraginga culture of continuous learning and improvement within the organization can help ensure that change management practices evolve and remain effective over time.

Continuous Improvement and Iterative Changes

Change is not a one-time event but an ongoing process. The ITIL Change Definition recognizes the need for continuous improvement and emphasizes the importance of iterative changes to optimize IT services, enhance customer satisfaction, and stay ahead of the competition.

Importance of Continuous Improvement

Continuous improvement is essential for organizations to adapt to evolving technologies, market demands, and customer expectations. By continuously evaluating and enhancing their change management practices, organizations can identify areas for improvement, address inefficiencies, and ensure that their processes remain effective and efficient.

Continuous improvement also encourages a culture of learning and innovation within the organization. It fosters an environment where individuals and teams are encouraged to identify opportunities for improvement, experiment with new ideas, and share best practices. This collaborative approach to change management helps drive organizational growth and success.

Iterative Changes for Optimization

Iterative changes refer to a series of small, incremental changes made over time to optimize IT services and processes. Rather than implementing large-scale changes that may disrupt operations or introduce higher risks, organizations can adopt an iterative approach that allows for controlled experimentation and continuous enhancement.

Iterative changes offer several benefits. They enable organizations to test and validate changes in a controlled environment, allowing for quick feedback and adjustment. This minimizes the potential impact of changes and reduces the risk of major disruptions. Additionally, iterative changes provide an opportunity to gather data and metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of each change, enabling organizations to make data-driven decisions and further refine their processes.

Furthermore, iterative changes facilitate agility and adaptability within organizations. As technology and business needs evolve, organizations can quickly respond and adapt by making iterative changes. This allows them to stay competitive, deliver value to customers, and continuously improve their IT services.

Case Studies: Successful Implementation of ITIL Change Definition

Real-world case studies serve as valuable examples of how organizations have successfully implemented the ITIL Change Definition. They provide insights into the challenges faced, the strategies employed, and the outcomes achieved, offering practical learnings for other organizations embarking on their change management journey.

Case Study 1: ABC Corporation

ABC Corporation, a global IT services provider, successfully implemented the ITIL Change Definition to improve the efficiency and quality of their change management processes. They faced challenges such as a lack of visibility into ongoing changes, manual and time-consuming approval processes, and coordination issues among different teams.

To address these challenges, ABC Corporation invested in change management software that streamlined their change management processes. The software provided a centralized platform for submitting, tracking, and managing change requests, automating approval workflows, and generating reports on change activities.

The implementation of the ITIL Change Definition resulted in significant improvements for ABC Corporation. They experienced reduced change turnaround times, improved visibility into ongoing changes, and enhanced collaboration among different teams. The standardized processes and automated workflows allowed for better risk assessment and mitigation, leading to fewer disruptions and improved customer satisfaction.

Case Study 2: XYZ Bank

XYZ Bank, a leading financial institution, implemented the ITIL Change Definition to address the increasing complexity of their IT environment and the need for better control over changes. They faced challenges such as frequent unauthorized changes, lack of documentation, and poor communication and coordination among teams.

To overcome these challenges, XYZ Bank established a Change Advisory Board (CAB) consisting of representatives from different departments and stakeholders. The CAB implemented a rigorous change evaluation and approval process, ensuring that all proposed changes align with business objectives and undergo thorough assessment and risk analysis.

The implementation of the ITIL Change Definition at XYZ Bank resulted in significant improvements in change management. Unauthorized changes were significantly reduced, as all changes had to go through a centralized approval process. Documentation and communication were improved, ensuring that stakeholders were informed about the planned changes and their potential impact.

Overall, XYZ Bank experienced increased stability in their IT environment, reduced incidents and disruptions, and improved compliance with regulatory requirements. The successful implementation of the ITIL Change Definition helped XYZ Bank enhance their reputation as a reliable and trustworthy financial institution.

Future Trends in ITIL Change Definition

The field of IT and change management is continually evolving, and the ITIL Change Definition needs to adapt to emerging trends and technologies. Several future trends are likely to shape the future of change management, and organizations should be prepared to embrace these trends to stay ahead of the competition and deliver optimal IT services.

Artificial Intelligence and Automation

Artificial intelligence (AI) and automation technologies are increasingly being used to optimize change management processes. AI-powered algorithms can analyze large amounts of data, identify patterns, and predict the potential impact of changes. Automation tools can streamline routine tasks, such as change request routing and documentation, freeing up resources for more strategic activities.

The integration of AI and automation in change management can enhance decision-making, improve accuracy, and reduce manual effort. Organizations can leverage these technologies to gain insights into change patterns, identify potential risks, and make data-driven decisions. This allows for proactive change management and the ability to respond swiftly to emerging opportunities and challenges.

DevOps and Agile Methodologies

DevOps and Agile methodologies are revolutionizing the way organizations develop, deploy, and manage IT services. These approaches emphasize collaboration, continuous integration, and iterative development, aligning well with the principles of the ITIL Change Definition.

By adopting DevOps and Agile methodologies, organizations can foster a culture of collaboration and cross-functional teamwork. This enables faster and more efficient change management, as teams work together to deliver value and respond to changing business needs. The iterative nature of these methodologies also allows for quick feedback and adjustments, promoting continuous improvement and adaptation.

Cloud Computing and Hybrid Environments

Cloud computing and hybrid environments are becoming increasingly prevalent in IT infrastructures. These environments introduce new challenges and complexities in change management, as organizations need to manage changes across on-premises infrastructure and various cloud service providers.

The ITIL Change Definition needs to evolve to address the unique requirements of cloud and hybrid environments. Organizations should consider incorporating specific guidelines and processes for managing changes in these environments, ensuring that changes are properly evaluated, approved, and implemented across different platforms and providers.

Cybersecurity and Risk Management

Cybersecurity threats continue to evolve, and organizations need to be proactive in managing risks associated with changes. The ITIL Change Definition should incorporate robust risk management practices, ensuring that changes are thoroughly assessed for potential security vulnerabilities and their impact on overall risk profiles.

Organizations should consider integrating cybersecurity and risk management practices into their change management processes. This includes conducting comprehensive risk assessments, implementing appropriate security controls, and continuously monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of these measures. By prioritizing risk management in change management, organizations can enhance the security and resilience of their IT infrastructure.

The ITIL Change Definition serves as a guiding framework for organizations seeking to effectively manage and control changes in their IT environment. By understanding the importance of this framework and embracing its principles, organizations can minimize risks, improve service delivery, and stay ahead in the ever-evolving world of IT. With continuous improvement, the right tools and technologies, and an adaptable approach to change, organizations can navigate the complexities of change with confidence, ensuring smooth transitions and optimal IT performance.

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Change Evaluation: The Seven R’s Revisited

The 2011 version of ITIL introduced the lesser known change evaluation process. It’s a great addition, and I haven’t seen a lot written about it.

The first thing to know is not every change requires a formal change evaluation. It’s intended to be used primarily for major changes, where the complexity and scope of the change warrants careful and formalized evaluation.

Change evaluation comes with its own Seven R’s – a handy same-letter list that’s easy to remember, and can help make sure we’ve explored the most common sources of issues with proposed changes.

Here’s the seven R’s:

  • Who raised the request for change (RFC)?
  • What’s the reason for the RFC?
  • What return is the change expected to deliver?
  • What risks does the change pose?
  • What resources are necessary?
  • Who is responsible for the key tasks?
  • What’s the relationship between this and other requested changes?

The list is not intended to be a set of required fields on the RFC form; modern IT systems are far too complex. It’s intended to be used in the evaluation process to trigger deeper thinking about a proposed change and uncover potentially hidden sources of risk and unintended consequences.

A Great Start

The R’s are a great start, but we really need to do a little more serious detective work. Remember, change evaluation is reserved for major changes, where there’s often a great deal of complexity and high visibility.

Let’s put on our detective hats, and take a closer look.

Who raised the RFC is a good place to start. It goes well beyond who’s filling out the form or taking administrative responsibility for the RFC. Change evaluation needs to know the role and business function of the requestor.

If it’s IT, what functional unit? Why was it raised by this particular person or group?

If customer, does the requestor represent all user groups of the service? Has the requestor worked with relationship management and/or the service owner? Was it raised by a person who was directly impacted by a recent incident?

Understanding more about the role and context of the requestor helps change evaluation understand the bigger picture.

Again, these are supposed to get you thinking deeper about the proposed change.

Reason for the Change

An analogous question would be “What are you hoping to accomplish with this change?” This one can be tricky because you need to get to the question behind the question. Sometimes RFCs come on the heels of a significant incident. Some changes are proactive changes to avoid a potential incident or problem (such as keeping technology current).

Other changes are raised to address very specific business needs. Some reasons are urgent and pressing and others are related to longer term releases or system upgrades.

The question of what you hope to accomplish helps identify what specific outcomes are anticipated, so change evaluation can help determine if the RFC is likely to deliver them. This question should be answered in plain, unambiguous language that makes very clear the purpose of the proposed change.

In my experience, this question can unearth significant issues. In the evaluation process, it may be discovered that there are differences in understanding the reason behind a change. If the request isn’t clear, it’s harder for the change to be successful in meeting the desired outcome(s).

This one tends to get forgotten because it’s hard to answer. ”Return” here is talking about business value. It too should be answered in plain language. An example would be: “RFC will deliver new order processing functionality that will reduce order processing time by 20%”.

The “return” should be specific and measurable, and from the perspective of the business. If it’s an infrastructure RFC, what risk or impact is it seeking to mitigate, and what’s the value of the avoided risk?

Identifying risks associated with change requests is critical for an effective change program. The risks here are not limited to technical and infrastructure risks – things like adding firewall rules may block application-required traffic.

When identifying risks, keep a business-impact focus in mind:

  • What could happen that would have adverse impact on the business?
  • Could the change impact other services running on the same infrastructure? Could there be unanticipated impact to business processes? Will the change increase the support load? Are there multiple changes happening at the same time, and are they compatible?
  • Do the results from the test environment accurately predict what will happen in production?
  • Will the changed service be able to meet its service level targets?

There are a number of formal risk management methodologies, such as ISO 31000 and Risk IT. If your company uses a formal methodology, that would be a good place to start.

Otherwise, a simple and common approach is to create a risk matrix, where risks are identified and each rated on the probability of its occurrence, and impact, if it does.

With this simple matrix, it’s pretty easy to see that you should focus most of your attention on the critical and high risks, some on the minimum, and little on the low risks.

One thing to keep in mind is that all changes have some level of risk. It’s not helpful to either under or over state risks. Both can have disastrous impact.

This is where you identify all resources required for a successful change implementation. This includes everyone needed to build, test, implement, communicate, support, or roll back the change.

  • Will the required resources be available during the development and implementation phases?
  • Are other changes scheduled that require the same resources?
  • Are the needed infrastructure and technical resources available (e.g. server and network capacity)?
  • Is there sufficient infrastructure capacity to support the changed service? (How will you know?)
  • Do all the players have what they need to be successful? (Will they be available immediately after the change is implemented?)

Responsible

Similar to resources, the “responsible” question seeks to ensure there are clearly established and understood roles and responsibilities. A RACI chart may be helpful (see What’s a RACI chart and how do I use it? ). This is a critical step that helps eliminate assumptions and avoid misunderstandings.

Relationship

This is where we seek to understand how the change in question may impact or be impacted by other recent or planned changes. How do the service components fit together?

  • Are there hidden dependencies to the components being changed? (What efforts have been made to identify?)
  • Are there unknown users of a service that’s being changed or decommissioned? (How do we know?)
  • Are there version dependencies between components, and have they been tested?
  • Does the test environment accurately represent the production environment?
  • Are critical parts of the infrastructure needed to implement the change that may be unavailable because of other changes?

Beyond the scope of this article, good configuration management and change modeling can be really helpful in understanding complex relationships.

Finding the Right Balance

Out in the real world, we all know some changes are more risky than others. It’s up to you to determine how deeply you need to go in evaluating a proposed change. If a change is large or complex or significant risk may be present, change evaluation is warranted. Changes that involve critical business functions or significant business process changes are excellent candidates for formal evaluation.

It’s been my experience that just when you think a change is benign, you get hit with something you didn’t think about, but maybe should have.

So, let me suggest a few additions of my own – reality , respect, results, and repeat :

This is where we take a quick reality-check. Yes, 12 Ninjas might drop from the ceiling and cause a large impact. But, in reality, how likely is it to happen? Have changes similar to the one under review been successfully implemented? Reality can be an important data point to help strike the right balance.

Data is a great reality check. Historic change information can be really helpful to help determine where additional evaluation is warranted and where it would be unnecessary. In reality, some change types, and components are just less problematic. Likewise, some that should be harmless no-brainers can cause big problems. Use reality as a guide.

The Change Advisory Board (CAB) is comprised of your best subject matter experts – those who have deep knowledge and are respected for their expertise and track record. Respect their experience and knowledge. When it comes down to it, change evaluation depends on people who are good at what they do.

  • Do the test plans adequately ensure the change will operate as intended?
  • Has business functionality been tested? (Have the ‘intended result’ been validated?)
  • Do the test results meet identified criteria for success?
  • Were business users involved with testing? (Were any significant issues raised?)
  • Has the business reviewed the test results?
  • Has the change being evaluated been done before? (Was it successful?)
  • Is it a change that’s been attempted and failed? (Have the reasons for the failure been identified and addressed?)
  • Have previous changes to the service components been successful?
  • If it involves vendor-supplied updates, what’s the track record of prior updates?

Making It Happen

Remember to use the R’s as a reminder to explore all aspects of a change. Effective change evaluation is core to successful service delivery and business value. Use the seven R’s of change evaluation to make sure you’re covering all the bases. Also, take a look at the extra ones I’ve suggested.

How about you? What additions would you make? Do you have any that you’ve found helpful?

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Itil 4 practices – what’s new and changed, the 7 guiding principles of itil 4: practical advice to help you make decisions, itil 4 value system, value chain, value stream: what’s the difference, everything you officially need to know about itil 4, getting started with continual improvement, 8 tips for getting started with knowledge management.

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Greg Sanker

Greg is an IT Service Management blogger, speaker, and practitioner with decades of global IT experience ranging from Fortune 10 tech giant to public sector. He lives in the Pacific Northwest (USA), where stunning natural beauty and high tech form a unique lifestyle. In his spare time, Greg hikes, bikes, and plays a bit of blues guitar. He blogs about Excellence in IT Service Management at ITSMTransition.com.

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Three key elements of assessment and evaluation of changes according to itil.

Advisera Branimir Valentic

Changes necessitate the recruitment of many resources inside your organization – management, developers, technicians, operations people… etc. But, are they all important enough? Do they all need the same approach? This question can sound tricky, but it’s not. Neither is the answer – no, they do not all have the same importance.

To recall the basics of the change management process, read the article Elements of Change Management in ITIL . In that article, we said that there are three types of changes: standard, emergency, and normal change. But, the types of changes still don’t say anything about the importance of the particular change, or rather, the request for such a change (which is a trigger for the change process). We need to assess and evaluate changes to set the importance of a particular Request for change.

Why categorize?

Once there is a Request for change , you have to log it with all relevant data. That will be your Change record, which must be kept up to date throughout the lifecycle of the change (i.e., from creation until implementation and review). I usually find that every organization defines its own content for the Request for change. It usually happens that different categories of changes should record different sets of information. Once your change is logged, its initial category should be assigned. The change category depends on a few parameters:

  • Level of risk  – there are no changes without risk. So, here you will assess the risk associated with the change.
  • Costs  – every change has its costs. Some of them are minor, but it could be that significant financial resources are required.
  • Scope and relation to other changes – changes that are requested or are in development need to be considered in order not to overlap the activities or, even worse, to come into conflict with changes that have already begun.

The category will dictate the authorization of the change, which can even go outside the Change Management process. ITIL  sets another process related to changes: the Change Evaluation process (you can learn more about this process in the following article: ITIL – Change Evaluation Process ).

According to the above-mentioned parameters, there are a few categories of changes:

  • Minor – low level of risk and costs
  • Significant – moderate level of risk and costs
  • Major – high level of risk and costs

How do assessment and evaluation work?

First of all, assessment and evaluation are critical to proceeding further. Can you imagine what would happen if evaluation of a proposed change on, e.g., an ATM service as a critical banking system in an international bank wasn’t performed, and once the change started – the ATM service stopped?

Because every change has its authority for approval, the same body (or person) is in charge of assessing and evaluating change. Let’s see what is required to assess and evaluate change.

Risk evaluation – I noticed that larger organizations have well-developed risk assessment procedures. But, if you are not a large organization, there are many “simpler” risk assessment methodologies. Basically, the risk of the change depends on its impact and probability. A simple matrix can be used:

ITIL Change Management – 3 key elements of assessment of changes

When considering risk, you should see it from a business point of view.

Costs – Some of the changes require little, while some require significant costs. Take, for example, a change of the firmware on the firewall (one or several of them) and change of the operating system for all computers inside the organization. Costs associated with each of the examples are quite different, aren’t they?

Impact on services – There is a nice “tool” that can help you to assess the impact of the change on other services or service assets – 7 Rs, which basically requires that you ask yourself the following seven questions:

  • Who raised the change?
  • What is the reason for the change?
  • What is the return required from the change?
  • What is the risk involved in the change?
  • Who is responsible for the build, test, and implementation of the change?
  • What is the relationship between this change and other changes?

The 7 Rs will help you assess the change from all aspects. Further on, when evaluating the impact of the change, you should consider other RfCs or changes in progress, the impact of the change on other services, and (also very important) the impact of not implementing the change.

What to do afterwards?

Once you are finished with assessment and evaluation – priority should be assigned.

Assigning priority will help you to decide about further courses of action. This means that changes with higher priority will be implemented first. Assigning priority depends on your own situation. For one person, software used in logistics may be of medium priority, but for someone else – of highest priority. As long as you know why you assigned a particular priority to the change, the situation is under control.

Priority has a direct influence on the change schedule , which is your implementation plan.

Assessment and evaluation are crucial steps in the change lifecycle. It’s not necessarily a complex task, but one thing is certain – you have to do it, and you have to do it carefully, because change can require a lot of effort (read: investment). Don’t waste it with clumsy assessment and evaluation.

To see how you comply with ITIL recommendations regarding Change Management, use our free   ITIL Gap Analysis Tool .

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Itil service transition: principles, benefits, and processes.

Service transition is the process of moving services from development into the production environment. Without careful planning, new and updated services can potentially disrupt business processes. Collaboration across IT and the business is necessary, including preparing users and support staff for the change.

Service transition is the third stage of the ITIL service lifecycle . It applies to new services, existing services that are changing, and retiring legacy services. ITIL service transition employs best practices to shift services to production effectively, safely, and efficiently.

This guide will review the benefits and key principles of ITIL service transition, as well as roles and processes that ensure success.

What is ITIL service transition?

During ITIL service transition, IT teams move new or updated services from the development environment to production. It uses the service knowledge management system to ensure the changes provide value to the business. It deploys prioritized changes that improve efficiency and mitigate risks.

Key principles of service transition

Formalizing the ITIL service transition process reduces the risks inherent in making changes. It also ensures that IT teams are ready to address issues. The key principles of service transition encourage teams to:

  • Manage and predict potential course corrections.
  • Repurpose existing services for efficiency.
  • Maintain important services during the transition.
  • Transfer critical knowledge for faster, more accurate decision-making .

Define roles and responsibilities for timely, knowledgeable responses.

ITIL service transition process

Service transition in ITIL helps IT teams identify hidden risks, clarify roles, share knowledge before it’s necessary, plan for contingencies, and assist customers with the changes. The ITIL service transition process consists of the following steps:

Planning and coordination

Planning and coordination give teams clearly defined activities to complete during the transition. Teams map each role and responsibility collaboratively. They also identify key stakeholders, which helps create a clear understanding and agreement on what to do and who will do it.

Change evaluation

Change evaluation addresses significant changes to critical business systems, such as customer relationship management or payment processing services. The Change Advisory Board (CAB) often recommends these changes because they offer benefits that outweigh the risks. 

Change management assesses the details of the changes, reviews risks, and often includes an impact analysis. The CAB prioritizes changes so developers can focus on the technical aspects of the changes.

Release and deployment

Release and deployment are central to the success of ITIL service transition. This step manages building, testing, planning, and deploying services. This can include pilots, communicating with stakeholders, training customers, and adhering to service level agreements (SLA) .

Categorizing releases into types helps IT teams prioritize based on need. Major releases may include hardware and software components or new features. A minor release may consist of significant changes to existing services. Emergency releases require immediate attention and can include temporary patches or workarounds.

Service validation and testing

Service validation and testing ensures the quality and reliability of the service in the production environment. For example, a payment processing service change may require additional rounds of prerelease testing and post-implementation validation to ensure the service works as expected.

Knowledge transfer

Gathering, documenting, and sharing information about the service change prepares customers for success. This is especially critical for support teams, who need to respond knowledgeably to unforeseen issues. Good knowledge transfer decreases downtime and helps eliminate user frustration.

Release closure

The release closure step clearly defines the end of the project. It also allows teams to review the process from an experienced perspective. This promotes continuous improvement and team collaboration . Examining stumbling blocks and issues should focus on identifying solutions and never on placing blame.

Benefits of ITIL service transition

ITIL service transition improves the overall success and efficiency of changes in several ways:

  • Unforeseen delays and downtime decrease.
  • User experience and confidence in support preparedness improve.
  • Improvements are cost-effective and based on business needs.
  • Maintainability improves.

Support staff and customers gain more knowledge.

Service transition roles and responsibilities

Depending on the complexity of the change, the roles and responsibilities of ITIL service transition teams can vary. They can include a change manager who oversees the CAB , which assesses and authorizes the change. It can include a release manager who focuses on the detailed tasks of the release itself. Configuration management, which controls and maintains information about relationships and dependencies, is often a key area of responsibility. Or, it can include application developers and managers who oversee testing, knowledge, and projects.

Integration with other ITIL lifecycle stages

Service transition is the third stage in the ITIL lifecycle. It builds on the preceding service strategy and service design stages. Service transition transforms the approved change from a strategic goal to a completed, integrated service in the production environment. Release management unites these stages. It includes mapping plans for operation and continual service improvement.

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Service management: Frequently asked questions

What is the purpose of service transition.

Service transition involves every aspect of moving new and changed services from the development and testing environments into production. It identifies risks, defines roles and responsibilities, and ensures adherence to policies and service-level agreements. It also coordinates affected services and provides necessary technical knowledge and user training for successful integration.

What is the difference between service transition and change management?

Both service transition and change management focus on changes to business systems. Change management is a standardized process for assessing and prioritizing all changes. It often includes the CAB, which approves and prioritizes change requests. Service transition focuses on specific, pre-approved changes and moving those changes into the production environment.

What are the 5 stages of an ITIL service lifecycle?

The service lifecycle includes the following five stages:

  • ITIL service strategy aligns business goals and customer needs with implementation strategies. 
  • Service design focuses on holistic approaches to designing and delivering improved services.
  • Service transition deploys the service to the production environment.
  • Service operation refers to the day-to-day operation of the company.
  • Continuous service improvement strategically identifies further opportunities to improve.

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Organizational change management: ITIL 4 Practice Guide

Organizational change management: ITIL 4 Practice Guide

January 1, 2020  |

  35  min read

This document provides practical guidance for the organizational change management (OCM) practice.

1. About this document

It is split into five main sections, covering:

  • general information about the practice
  • the practice’s processes and activities and their roles in the service value chain
  • the organizations and people involved in the practice
  • the information and technology supporting the practice
  • considerations for partners and suppliers for the practice.

1.1 ITIL® 4 Qualification scheme

Selected content from this document is examinable as a part of the following syllabuses:

  • ITIL Specialist : Create, Deliver and Support
  • ITIL Specialist : Direct, Plan and Improve.

Please refer to the relevant syllabus documents for details.

2. General information

2.1 purpose and description.

OCM is a practice that serves the continually emerging wish and need for organizational growth, improvement, and evolution.

To improve product and service portfolio, organizational structure or underlying technology, people are essential for the transformation to be successful. Organizational evolution enables a change in their capabilities, the way they work, feel, and behave. These changes should not be forced upon people but should lead to a new valuable system, so people could willingly adopt new ways of behaviour and work.

OCM aims to build a value-driven environment across the organization and enable successful organizational changes of a required scope. According to the organizational vision and need, all stakeholders should adopt new ways of working, as well as minimize risks and possible negative impacts of any change to the quality of service/products and consumer experience.

This is achieved by recognizing and understanding stakeholders’ expectations and values, having the vision, co-creating plans and actions, communicating effectively, empowering employees, and anchoring a new cultural approach.

OCM contributes to every part of the service value system (SVS). It incorporates three premises:

  • The practice is integrated into value streams and ensures that changes are effective, safe, and meet stakeholders’ expectations.
  • The practice does not aim to unify all the changes planned and carried out in an organization into one big picture: this is neither possible or required.
  • The practice should focus on balancing effectiveness, agility, compliance, and risk control for all changes in the defined scope.

2.2 Terms and concepts

2.2.1 change, transformation, evolution.

Change is a different way of executing tasks. Doing it as it has previously been done, but in a more efficient and productive way. Change uses external impact to modify actions.

Transformation is a different way of working. It involves changes in beliefs, values, and wishes. Transformation results shift in the organizational system and as a result, in personal and organizational behaviour. The transformation is based on learning from previous mistakes.

Evolution is a state of continual improvement through transformation and change. The foundation of evolution is constant adjustments in values, beliefs, and behaviour, with the use of internal and external feedback.

There is an important distinction between organizational change and transformation. Before any organizational change is executed, stakeholders should consider the actions mentioned, as it will change the attitude and may impact the result.

Defining an initiative as a change or a transformation, helps to select appropriate methods for its management. It is also important to identify whether a specific change contributes to the organization’s evolution.

To understand the evolutionary context and every change or transformation contribution to the organization’s development, a high level of system intelligence from the stakeholders is required. System intelligence enables organizations to move from personal growth to team growth and from managed groups to creative and mature teams.

2.2.2 Emotional, social, and system intelligence

When people are involved in situations, the level of complexity increases, and it is important to be ready to deal with unpredictable and unknown circumstances. Even though the OCM practice is concerned with the people side of change, it is recommended to use the concepts and tools provided by the change enablement practice. More information about complexity-based approach to changes can be found there.

Dealing with changes related to people requires a high level of presence, consciousness, self-leadership, and responsibility from all stakeholders. Through the whole organizational change lifecycle, it is important to focus on all three dimensions: individuals involved in change, relationships between them, and systems in general.

To create flexible, resilient, and fulfilled individuals, teams, and systems, organizations should aim to support the development of three forms of intelligence 1 :

Emotional Intelligence is the ability to access, express, and use one’s emotions in an efficient way. It describes having emotional self-awareness and the capacity to manage feelings by directing them toward goals. It also ensures the ability to self-motivate, suppress impulsive actions, and delay immediate satisfaction in order to achieve the goals.

Social intelligence builds on emotional intelligence. It is the capability to identify emotions of other people by not making assumptions, being empathetic, and open to co-creative actions and new ways of working in order to achieve common goals and build positive relationships. It also includes knowing and using social roles and rules, effective listening, and conversational skills.

Systems intelligence is the ability to understand, reflect upon, express, and incorporate the wider context of the system(s) a human interacts within into actions. It combines sensitivity about the environment with system thinking . In regards to the ITIL guiding principles, it is based on the ability to think and work holistically, while focusing on value, in the context of adaptive complex systems. It is the capability to see oneself as a part of a system, identify system characteristics, be aware of system rules and patterns, and be able to contribute to a system development consciously.

2.2.3 Values-based organizational change

Values are deeply held principles, ideas, and beliefs that people use when displaying behaviour. It is an important foundation for decision-making and any potential changes.

If the culture of an organization is supported with personal values, it encourages people to bring their best effort and commitment to work. If personal and organizational values are aligned, any resistance to change will be viewed as an additional source of information and resource for improvement. Managing resistance will not be needed.

Organizational culture can be described as a set of values that are shared by a group of people, including ideas, beliefs, practices and expectations about how people should behave. More information can be found in ITIL ® 4: Direct, Plan and Improve .

Recognizing the distribution of values through the levels and identifying those that enable or limit the organization’s evolution, will generate sources of information for organizational change, planning, and execution. 1

Capture.PNG

Figure 2.1 Value based organizational change

“Organizations that focus exclusively on the satisfaction of the lower needs, are not adaptable and do not empower employees. Consequently, there is little enthusiasm within the workforce, and there is little innovation and creativity. These organizations are often ruled by fear and are not healthy places to work. Employees often feel frustrated and complain about stress.” Organizational changes are usually not successful in this type of organizations.

“Organizations that focus exclusively on the satisfaction of the higher needs lack the basic business skills and capabilities necessary to operate effectively. They are ineffectual and impractical when it comes to financial matters. They are not customer oriented, and they lack the systems and processes necessary for high-performance.”

“The most successful organizations are those that have mastered both their “deficiency” needs and their “growth” needs. They create a climate of trust, have the ability to manage complexity, and can respond or rapidly adapt to all situations.” These organizations present environment for transformation and evolution. 2

2.2.4 Organizational change principles 3

Due to the latest findings in neuroscience, technologies (such as artificial intelligence, big data, robotics, and so on), and human emotional evolution, there has been a big shift in management, leadership, and motivation approaches. These changes enable organizations to reconsider the ways organizational changes are implemented. Many of the conventional models of change management are based on obsolete ideas about human motivation and behaviour.

The OCM practice should include approaches to situations of different complexity. Organizations define the changes, the level of control, and the principles that should be addressed by the practice. Change definition considerations can be found in the change enablement practice.

An example of a set of principles that can help guide the organizational changes to be successful through designing an adaptive environment is shown below. Leaders in an organization must translate these principles to suit the specific requirements of their business if they are to achieve the target of their change.

Clear and relevant objectives 

  • The objectives of the change must be based on the vision and values of the organization, and clear for the stakeholders. The change must be of real value.

Strong and committed leadership

  • A well-designed process uses leadership capabilities anywhere within the organization. Anyone can contribute or lead a change initiative at any stage. The potentially complex and dynamic nature of a transformation or change should be considered, and leadership should be flexible and open rather than fixed.
  • This practice should aim to create an environment where people may participate in change leadership as a shared practice.

Willing and prepared participants

The employee’s strengths should be the focus. Organizations should shift from overcoming employees’ resistance towards encouraging and supporting human intellectual capital for the purpose of organizational improvement.

  • Change stakeholders are valuable change agents: they can make vital contribution to an organizational transformation. People are naturally problem solvers with a unique capacity to adapt to a continually developing environment.
  • Human-centred design of the OCM process. The needs and values of stakeholders should be understood.
  • Map stakeholders’ and organizational values.
  • Base a change on intrinsic motivation, rather than extrinsic reinforcement. Autonomy, competence, and relatedness. 4

Sustained improvement

Keep co-creation as the centre approach for organizational change. Therefore, every area of an organization is open for feedback and improvement. Co-creation is a choice that joins different parties to produce a mutually valued outcome.

  • To maintain the achieved good result for organizational change, systems should continually evolve depending on organizational needs and vision.

The scope of the OCM practice includes:

  • designing, implementing, and continually improving an adaptive approach for a developing environment in an organization
  • planning and improving organizational change approaches and methods
  • scheduling and coordinating all ongoing changes through the whole lifecycle
  • communicating change plans and progress to relevant stakeholders
  • assessing change success, including outputs, outcomes, efficiency, risks, and costs.

This practice supports all value streams and can be used with any other practice as they can all initiate organizational changes. However, organizations usually limit the application of the OCM practice to a finite number of changes, where behaviour, capabilities, responsibilities and/or roles are to be changed.

Other practices may significantly contribute to the organizational changes in the four dimensions of service management. These are listed in Table 2.1.

Table 2.1 Organizational changes in the four dimensions of service management

There are several activities and areas of responsibility that are not included in the OCM practice, although they are still closely related to change. These are listed in Table 2.2, with references to the practice guides in which they can be found. It is important to remember that the ITIL practices are collections of tools to use in the context of value streams; they should be combined as necessary, depending on the situation.

Table 2.2 Activities related to the OCM practice that are described in other practice guides

2.4 practice success factors.

A practice success factor (PSF) is more than a task or activity, as it includes components from all four dimensions of service management. The nature of the activities and resources of PSFs within a practice may differ, but together they ensure that the practice is effective.

The OCM practice includes the following PSFs:

  • creating and maintaining a change-enabling culture across the organization
  • establishing and maintaining a holistic approach and continual improvement for organizational change management
  • ensuring organizational changes are realized in an effective manner, leading to stakeholders’ satisfaction and meeting compliance requirements.

2.4.1 Creating and maintaining a change-enabling culture across the organization

A change-enabling culture is a set of beliefs, attitudes, values, common knowledge, and expectations about change shared by people within an organization. It determines whether people can identify, understand, openly discuss, and act on change in a way that leads to organizational evolution. Additionally, it differs between organizations and may become a competitive advantage, if implemented wisely.

OCM technics and instruments can only be effective when they are used in the right way and moment, and with commitment from change stakeholders.

An organization that adapts changes can be established by creating an atmosphere where people are encouraged to speak up, challenge the way things are done, and listen and communicate effectively. Adaptive environments stimulate discussions and input for changes, considers agile vision, and new ways of operation. This culture may not only impact internal communication within an organization, but also cooperation with partners and suppliers.

To assist OCM practice with creating and maintaining an efficient change-enabling culture, it is important to use the following practices:

  • workforce and talent management
  • relationship management
  • strategy management
  • continual improvement management.

2.4.2 Establishing and maintaining a holistic approach and continual improvement for organizational change management

Identifying opportunities to improve organizational changes, principles, and methods are important. Improvements can also be initiated in areas such as the practice’s processes, tools, or other resources; and should aim to improve the practice and the experience of the stakeholders.

It is important to ensure that service improvements are not only initiated, but also effectively implemented. An approach to implementing improvements is described in the continual improvement practice guide. Also, it is vital to use multiple practices in the context of value streams, to maintain the progress of the continual improvement of services.

2.4.3 Ensuring organizational changes are realized in effective manner, leading to stakeholders’ satisfaction and meeting compliance requirements

Organizations should specify and execute a process to manage organizational changes. The OCM practice ensures that the most suitable process for organization’s values and vision is in use. Many stakeholders have an interest in organizational changes. This includes:

  • service provider teams
  • sponsors of service provision
  • sponsors of service consumption
  • suppliers and partners.

This practice ensures that stakeholders are identified and that their values and expectations are captured, considered, and met as appropriate. This is done in combination with the relationship management, risk management, and business analysis practices.

Organizations should focus on the continual monitoring of stakeholder engagement and satisfaction during change planning, realization, and after the change is complete. Ongoing communication, status updates, and feedback collection are important components of managing satisfaction and the workforce and talent management practice.

Many change-related governance and compliance requirements affect the OCM practice. It is important that organizations capture them, understand them, and ensure that they are met. The practice supports this by:

  • including required controls in change plans, processes, and procedures
  • providing required information
  • initiating improvement to prevent or correct non-compliance.

As the IT world is constantly changing, many organizations do not have a static end state of the change it requires. Therefore, it should maintain flexibility in structures to support constant improvement according to recent needs; this will lead to a change adaptive environment and enable capacity to fulfil them in the most beneficial way.

2.5 Key metrics

The effectiveness and performance of the ITIL practices should be assessed within the context of the value streams to which each practice contributes. As with the performance of any tool, the practice’s performance can only be assessed within the context of its application. However, tools can differ greatly in design and quality, and these differences define a tool’s potential or capability to be effective when used according to its purpose. Further guidance on metrics, key performance indicators (KPIs), and other techniques that can help with this can be found in the measurement and reporting practice guide.

Key metrics for the OCM practice are mapped to its PSFs. They can be used as KPIs in the context of value streams in order to assess the contribution of the practice to the effectiveness and efficiency of those value streams. Some examples of key metrics are given in Table 2.3.

Table 2.3 Key metrics for the OCM practice

The correct combination of metrics into complex indicators will make it easier to use the data for the ongoing management of value streams, and for the periodic assessment and continual improvement of the OCM practice. There is no single best solution. Metrics will be based on the overall service strategy and priorities of an organization, as well as on the goals of the value streams to which the practice contributes.

3. Value Streams and processes

3.1 value stream contribution.

Like any other ITIL practice, the OCM practice contributes to multiple value streams. It is important to remember that a value stream is never formed from a single practice. This practice combines with other practices to provide high-quality services to consumers. The main value chain activities to which the practice contributes are:

  • design and transition

The contribution of the OCM practice to the service value chain is shown in Figure 3.1.

Image of Figure 3.1 show the contribution of the Organizational Change Management practice to the service Value Chain

Figure 3.1 The contribution of the OCM practice to the service value chain

For more detailed description of OCM’s contribution to value streams, see ITIL ® 4: Direct, Plan and Improve , section 7.3.1.6.

3.2 Processes

Each practice may include one or more processes and activities that may be necessary to fulfil the purpose of that practice.

OCM activities form two processes:

  • organizational change lifecycle management
  • management of change adaptive environment.

3.2.1 Organizational change lifecycle management

This process includes the activities listed in Table 3.1 and transforms the inputs into outputs.

Table 3.1 Inputs, activities, and outputs of the organizational change lifecycle management process

Figure 3.2 shows the workflow for organizational change lifecycle management.

Image of Figure 3.2 shows workflow diagram for Organizational Change Lifecycle Management

Figure 3.2 Workflow for organizational change lifecycle management

The process may vary depending on the change type and scope. Table 3.2 provides examples of the activities in two different scopes of change 5 .

Organizations should embrace the diversity of architectures and approaches to management to ensure the flexibility of services and meet stakeholder expectations.

Table 3.2 Organizational change lifecycle management process activities

3.2.2 management of change adaptive environment.

In adaptive organizations, change is not a forced event, but rather a part of organizational culture. This process includes the activities listed in Table 3.3 and transforms the inputs into outputs.

Table 3.3 Management of change adaptive environment process activities

Figure 3.3 shows a workflow diagram of the process.

Image of Figure 3.3 shows workflow diagram for management of change adaptive environment

Figure 3.3 Workflow for management of change adaptive environment

Table 3.4 Activities of the change adaptive environment

The OCM practice activities are performed by the service provider, as described in Tables 3.2 and 3.4. They may involve customers, suppliers, and partners. These activities are also supported and sometimes partially automated by tools and technologies which are described in the following sections.

4. Organizations and people

4.1 roles, competencies and responsibilities.

The practice guides do not describe the roles of practice owners or managers that should exist for all practices. They focus instead on specialist roles specific to each practice. The structure and naming of each role may differ from organization to organization, so any roles defined in ITIL should not be treated as mandatory, or even recommended. It is also important to remember that roles are not job titles, and that one person can take on multiple roles and one role can be assigned to multiple people.

Roles are described in the context of processes and activities. Each role is characterized with a competence profile based on the following model shown in Table 4.1.

Table 4.1 Competency codes and profiles

Examples of the roles that can be involved in OCM activities, the associated competency profiles, and required skills are listed in Table 4.2.

Table 4.2 The roles involved in OCM activities

4.1.1 change leader role.

A change leader role is also known as change lead or change coach in different organizations. It is common practice to assign the role to management, HR, or project management teams; but it can also be successfully taken by a representative of any other team, who is capable of coordinating actions around the change scope and requirements in the most efficient way.

The role of a change leader should focus less on pushing through a change project, and more on creating the change-enabling environment, where stakeholders can choose to adapt for the new required state of the organizational system.

This role is typically responsible for:

  • The initial processing and verification of a change request by coordinating an action of understanding the change need and scope.
  • Coordinating the identification, nomination, and creation of a change team.
  • Empowering, mentoring, and leading a change team through the whole change lifecycle.
  • Formally communicating decisions made through the change lifecycle to the stakeholders and affected parties.
  • Monitoring and reviewing the activities of the teams that are involved in a change.
  • Conducting regular ad hoc practice analyses, and initiating improvements to the practice, procedures, used methods, and tools.
  • Developing the organization’s expertise in the methods and approaches for the OCM practice.
  • Creating an environment that embraces psychological safety, mutual respect, and trust; where employees can realize potential as self-initiating change agents.
  • Reinforcing conformity with the change mandate by holding the change team accountable.

The competency profile for these roles is LACM, though the importance of each of these competencies varies from activity to activity.

4.1.2 Change team member role

Any organizational change methods and tools are flawed unless it acknowledges people’s capacity for agency and co-creation. Today’s knowledge-based environment, often requires complex problem solving and depends on the collaboration between multi-specialized contributors.

Shared leadership models support organization’s evolution by shifting from top-down one-hero leadership to interdependent, coordinative leadership by a change team. A change team is a team of people with different capabilities and skills who work together and lead change to achieve mutually desired outcomes. The shared leadership is a set of shared practices that should be executed by people at all levels of an organizational structure.

A change team and a change lead are responsible for defining, communicating, and executing the change vision and plan. It is expected that the change team will apply its ingenuity and contribute ideas and efforts to change.

When organizational change is a part of a big project or program, it is also supported by a project management team.

A change team member should demonstrate the following types of behaviour to support change processes:

  • taking risks
  • eager to learn new ways of working
  • unlearning old methods
  • assuming new responsibilities and letting go obsolete ones
  • gathering feedback
  • discussing errors
  • celebrating and acknowledging small and big wins.

4.2 Organizational structures and teams

It is unusual to see dedicated organizational structures for the OCM practice, although the change leader role may be associated with a formal job title. This is typical for organizations with a complex bureaucracy or when a very high level of change-adaptive environment is required for organizational success.

Many organizations may include a change team and temporary teams assigned for a specific change, especially if the change is treated as a project. For more details on project teams, please see the management practice guide.

5. Information and technology

5.1 information exchange.

The effectiveness of the OCM practice is based on the quality of the information used. This includes, but is not limited to, information about:

  • organizational strategy and values
  • organizational structure
  • reflection of employees’ values to organizational values
  • services and their architecture and design
  • partners and suppliers
  • policies and requirements which regulate organizational structure
  • methods and technics to run organizational changes
  • proposed changes, including:
  • expected benefits for the employees and the organization as whole
  • estimated time and cost of change realization
  • regulations affecting the change
  • lessons learned from similar changes in the past
  • past and ongoing changes
  • stakeholder satisfaction with the practice.

This information may take various forms. The key inputs and outputs of the OCM practice are listed in section 3.2.

One important success factor of any change is an efficient distribution of accurate, timely, and up- to-date information. The distribution of information and ideas relies on the employees’ network density. The more links between social-network modes, the more likely that information will spread.

In bigger networks, people can benefit from the diversity of information channels, and the amount of perspectives to see one change. Network density makes it more likely that change understanding and acceptance will be achieved faster 6 .

5.2 Automation and tooling

In most cases, the OCM practice can significantly benefit from automation and using tools. Where this is possible and effective, it may involve the solutions outlined in Table 5.1.

Table 5.1 Automation solutions for OCM activities

6. partners and suppliers.

Very few services are delivered using only an organization’s own resources. Most, if not all, depend on other services. These are often provided by third parties (see section 2.4 of ITIL ® Foundation: ITIL 4 Edition for a model of a service relationship). Organizational change may impact agreements that are already finalized and working patterns with partners and suppliers. Therefore, these relationships should be considered while creating and performing a change vision and plan.

Relationships between organizations may involve various levels of integration and formality. (see Table 3.1 of ITIL ® Foundation: ITIL 4 Edition for more information about relationships between organizations). The decision to involve partner representatives to change activities, present change results or request input information to change, depends on forms of cooperation.

Where organizations aim to ensure fast and effective OCM, they usually try to agree close cooperation with their partners and suppliers, removing formal bureaucratic barriers in communication, collaboration, and decision-making (see the supplier management practice guide for more information).

Some organizational change activities may be outsourced to the third parties such as training, workshops facilitating, coaching, analysis, audits, and so on. The ownership and accountability for OCM actions are usually not transferred to an external resource.

7. Important reminder

Most of the content of the practice guides should be taken as a suggestion of areas that an organization might consider when establishing and nurturing their own practices. The practice guides are catalogues of topics that organizations might think about, not a list of answers. When using the practice guides, organizations should always follow the ITIL guiding principles:

  • focus on value
  • start where you are
  • progress iteratively with feedback
  • collaborate and promote visibility
  • think and work holistically
  • keep it simple and practical
  • optimize and automate.

More information on the guiding principles and their application can be found in section 4.3 of ITIL ® Foundation: ITIL 4 Edition.

8. Acknowledgements

Axelos Ltd is grateful to everyone who has contributed to the development of this guidance. These practice guides incorporate an unprecedented level of enthusiasm and feedback from across the ITIL community. In particular, AXELOS would like to thank the following people.

8.1 Authors

Antonina Klentsova.

8.2 Reviewers

Roman Jouravlev.

  • Based on articles and methods https://www.teamcoachingzone.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/01/RSI-White-Paper.pdf and https://www.crrglobal.com/relationship-systems- intelligence.html [Accessed 25th October 2019]
  • Quotations from https://www.valuescentre.com/wp- content/uploads/PDF_Resources/Additional_Articles/Article_Importance_of_Values.pdf [Accessed 25th October 2019]
  • https://www.forbes.com/sites/carstentams/2019/09/10/metamorphle-nine-principles-for- good-design-of-organizational-change/#2a1851283d31 [Accessed 25th October 2019]
  • Self-Determination Theory, the leading motivational theory developed by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan.
  • https://rework.withgoogle.com/blog/changing-the-change-rules-at-google [Accessed 25th October 2019]
  • https://www.forbes.com/sites/carstentams/2018/04/23/it-takes-a-village-change- management-as-community-building/#d1c52f85683e [Accessed 25th October 2019]

ITIL Change Management: Implementation Basics

ITIL Change Management Implementation Basics

ITIL is a framework of best practices for IT service management. The aim of ITIL is to provide workflows that break down IT management responsibilities into sub-tasks, thus reducing the complexity of day-to-day operations and project management.

The definition of ITIL was first released in 2001. Since that time, the system has been through a number of revisions. The latest version is called ITIL 4 Edition and it was published on February 18, 2019.

ITIL is organized as a set of books. Each book covers a particular stage in the ITIL Lifecycle :

  • Service Strategy
  • Service Design
  • Service Transition
  • Service Operation
  • Continual Service Improvement

Change Management is a “ process ” in the Service Transition stage.

The Change Management process

In ITIL, “ stages ” are broken up into “ processes .” The purpose of Change Management is to organize the workflow of introducing new IT services, which might be alterations to, or the replacement of, existing services. The development and introduction of the new system should be performed in a non-disruptive manner. The sign off for the process comes after the new system is operational and has proven to meet requirements.

The key aims of the process are to:

  • Reduce risk and impact of the new service
  • Avoid disruption of existing operations
  • Facilitate communications and approvals
  • Plan effectively, using available resources where possible
  • Confirm that the change has reduced the number incidents that it was designed to address

The trigger that starts the change management process arises from the Service Strategy stage or as a consequence of unsatisfactory results from the Continual Process Improvement stage. An external trigger for a change is a “ change request ”; a trigger that results from internal IT department assessments is a “ change proposal .”

Change management is not concerned with the development of new software and services. If a new application is going to be developed in-house, this is guided by a project management standard. This gap in the change process is due to the fact that change management applies equally to the installation of bought software. Therefore, if software is to be developed in-house, this is treated as a black box process and the developed application is treated as if it had been bought. That is, development is external to the ITIL Change Management process.

Configuration items

In ITIL, a Configuration Item (CI) is an element of the IT infrastructure. This use of the word “configuration” can be confusing to system administrators. The term usually refers to the settings of a device, such as a switch or a router. Its use in ITIL is completely different. Therefore, seasoned IT technicians need to put that regular usage of the word out of their head when approaching any ITIL-related meeting.

Confusing matters even further, the ITIL parlance refers regularly to “ configuration management .” In network administration, this term refers to the setting up of new devices and locking those settings so that they cannot be tampered with. There is a category of system management software that is called “configuration management tools.” Once again, the IT services operator has to forget the regular use of this term when working on an ITIL-guided project.

One of the important information stores in ITIL is called the “ Configuration Management Database ” ( CMDB ). This does not necessarily need to be an actual database. It can be maintained on paper. However, this is what an IT operation staff member would know as a device inventory and a software inventory. The ITIL CMDB is a list of all hardware and software assets.

The Change Management process is concerned with the replacement of or the creation of an asset in the CMDB. Therefore, when beginning a Change Management process, it is important to identify which CIs will be affected or created by the project.

Types of change

As well as categorizing changes by their source, there are a few more ways to identify different types of change. Identify a change as one of these definitions.

  • Urgent change A quick resolution of a serious problem that has caused an interruption to normal IT services. Although Change Management is meant to avoid disruption to normal service, an urgent change may cause upheaval because the importance of resolving an identified problem quickly overrides all other considerations.
  • Standard change The most frequently encountered type of change and the easiest type to manage. Most of the change management projects you will implement will be in this category. These changes can be implemented with internal processes, involving the Service Desk team.
  • Normal change A larger task than a standard change; this category of change includes supervision and involvement by external actors, such as the requestors for the change who are working in another department of the company.
  • Major change This is a very large undertaking that requires a major effort and will introduce a significantly different IT service. Major changes require a large financial investment and incur a risk to the company because failure would cause a large financial loss.

The number of people that need to be involved in an ITIL Change Management exercise varies depending on the type of change. Urgent changes and standard changes are the responsibility of the Service Desk team and the cost of implementing these changes is usually built into the Service Desk’s regular budget.

A normal change is a matter for negotiation between the requesting department and the Service Desk team. This can be seen as a commission that is governed by a contract. That agreement will specify the goals of the project and the requesting department will be in charge of judging whether those goals have been met before it “signs off” on the project.

A major change is a substantial change that is driven by corporate needs. Examples of such new requirements are the need to comply with existing or new industry standards or laws, a merger with another company requiring the two IT systems to unite, and a decision by the Board of Directors to launch a new product line or expand operations to new locations.

As major changes are likely to involve many business departments, there is no single customer within the business and the change may require input from experts drawn from outside the business, such as external auditors, legal advisors, marketing consultants, or pressure groups.

Because there are so many opinions that need to be involved in the definition of the goals of a major change and then the declaration that the change has been completed successfully, these types of changes require a Change Advisory Board ( CAB ).

​The Change Advisory Board

A senior member of the Service Desk team will be allocated to be a single point of contact for any change request raised outside of the IT department. In the case of normal changes, that staff member will liaison with the requestor of the change in order to negotiate the terms of the new project.

In the case of major changes, the requestor role is fulfilled by a panel, called a Change Advisory Board (CAB). The major project will be mandated by the Board of Directors and will be a vital chance for the success of the business. It will also require a large budget, which will need to be approved by the Board.

The importance and large cost of a major project mean that a member of the Board of Directors will be nominated to lead the CAB. A senior financial expert from the company will also be a CAB member. Other seats on the CAB will be filled by business specialists . Those seats do not always need to be filled by the same people because, as the project progresses, different experts will be needed to oversee the change.

The acceptance criteria for a major change are harder to define than any other type of change. The goals of the change might not be immediately quantifiable. They might be stated as “reduce costs by 20 percent over a five-year period.” In such an example, the full team would not be expected to be active until the long-term goal could be measured.

External resources are also commonly used as contributors to a CAB. So, an external auditor would be expected to be allocated to the team according to the goals of the change. For example, a cybersecurity expert and a data protection standards consultant would be expected to be added to the CAB for the implementation of a standard such as HIPAA or PCI-DSS.

In the case of a legally required change, external specialist consultant will be working on the implementation of the change. It is to be expected that the CAB experts would be drawn from a different consultancy to those hired to provide experts to the project itself. This avoids an external consultancy providing its own verification for a sign-off that would trigger the payment of fees.

​Change viability management

Major changes involve many more intermediate goals and progression to subsequent phases of a change might be contingent on the successful and proven achievement of those goals. In some cases, failure of an early stage of development could cause the change request to be canceled. Major changes involve a great deal of risk to the profitability and continuity of a business and the full scope of the hoped-for change can sometimes only become fully visible once a research phase of the change has been completed.

In many cases, it is better to scrap a change project rather than risk the financial viability of the business. If it becomes apparent that the desired change is not going to be financially feasible, its failure might lead the company to withdraw from the area of business where new legal requirements formed the trigger for the requested major change.

Despite the ability of ITIL to create a framework that sets out guidelines for change management, it doesn’t guarantee success. Part of the reason for applying ITIL is to minimize disruption and risk to the business’s regular operations. So, it follows that the priority of minimizing risk leads to ITIL sometimes compel the CAB to recommend dropping a change.

​Change Management responsibility

ITIL is a framework for IT Service Management ( ITSM ). The ITSM structure places all of the IT department staff that interface with other departments in the company in a section, known as the Service Desk. The Service Desk team includes Help Desk operators. The idea is that the Service Desk office provides a single point of contact for all IT needs within the business.

“A single point of contact” doesn’t mean one person or one platform. The difference between the Help Desk and Service Desk concepts is that Service Desk includes client-facing analysts that accept requests for change, help define the requirements, and liaison with the requestor until the change has been completed. These people are like ambassadors for the IT department and they are collectively known as the Change Authority .

No matter which type of change is needed, the Service Desk team is in charge of getting the project done.

The stages of Change Management

With any large task, it is easier to progress in a measurable manner if the big task is broken up into smaller stages. By this method, you create achievable short-term goals and the task becomes less daunting.

Change Management is broken down into a process flow , which is made up of four steps . These are:

  • Request for Change
  • Change Evaluation and Planning
  • Change Approvals
  • Change Implementation and Review

The Change Management tasks arise from each of these stages.

​Request for Change

A request for change is either a change request that arrives from other departments or a change proposal , which is a system improvement identified by the Service Desk team. A change request can come from anywhere in the business at any time. A change proposal arises when Help Desk technicians identify a problem that occurs again and again. Usually, a change request is for a new service and a change proposal is an improvement to an existing service.

However, the change request arises, there are a few preliminary tasks that need to be completed.

  • Log the request for change
  • Assign RFCs to analysts
  • The analyst defines the requested change
  • The analyst and requestor prepare an outline

The result of the Request for Change task is an ongoing list of potential change demands. Not every request on the list will be implemented.

​Change Evaluation and Planning

The Change Evaluation and Planning phase looks into each request and expands its outline. Not every Request for Change makes it to this phase. The first part of the Change Evaluation step involves judging each stored request for viability . Some requests will need further clarification and so get sent back to requestors for revision – a task that can be supported by an assigned analyst.

Whether impractical requests get removed from the change candidate list, sent for clarification, or just get left to gather dust is up to the expectation management policy of the Change Authority.

Urgent changes get fast-tracked through the evaluation process. By their definition, these changes have been proposed by the Service Desk team and so, implicitly, they have already been evaluated for desirability during the proposal formation, which may be very quick. A standard change is also quicker to implement than normal or major changes because they are formulated from within the Service Desk team or the IT Department and don’t require consultation with other departments.

The result of the Evaluation phase is the Change Evaluation Report . This goes into greater detail about the requested change and assesses its impact on the business, the IT system, the quality of service that the business delivers to its customers, and the improvements that it will create in staff productivity.

The risks involved in implementing the proposed change will also be explained in the Change Evaluation Report. If the development and installation of the new CI would cause disruption to existing systems, services, or working practices, these should be noted. A ballpark figure on the costs of the change and the number of resources that would be needed for the project should also be outlined .

The Change Evaluation Report should explain the viability of the proposal. It should also state the type of change and a likely set of goals to measure completion. The Change Evaluation Report presents a more clearly defined scope of the proposed change. Essentially, this is a quote to be proposed by the Change Authority to the requestor, or, in the case of major changes, to the head of the CAB.

​Change Approvals

The Change Approvals phase can take some time. This formulates the contract between the requestors and the Change Authority. Once the proposals presented in the Change Evaluation Report are accepted, the requestor will be on the hook for funding the change . Therefore, the speed of this phase depends on the type of change.

Urgent changes and standard changes are usually funded out of the standing IT budget. These change proposals are usually monitored by the management of the Service Desk and the IT Department during their formation and are usually relatively small changes, so cost approval can occur very quickly.

Major changes are also often quickly approved. This is because the driver of these changes is often unavoidable , such as a new legal requirement. Another reason why major changes move relatively quickly is that these requests are handed down from the Board of Directors, and so originate from the highest approval authority. Major changes are usually staged, with the initial phase being a feasibility study. So, initial approval doesn’t have major financial consequences because important decisions on whether to proceed can be deferred to the Implementation phase.

​Change Implementation and Review

The Implementation step requires the appointment of a Change Manager from within the Service Desk’s Change Authority.

The Change Manager is a coordinator who then commissions others to plan out all of the resources needed to complete the change. The change could be implemented with a new software package, or it might require dedicated hours from an IT Department specialist technician. The actual development of the solution is out of scope for Change Management.

The Change Manager needs to put in place a remediation plan to rollback any innovations in case the change plan fails. The Change Manager also needs to firm up goals and acceptance conditions before the implementation project begins. These project boundaries , along with completion time frames should be handed over to the implementation project manager. At this point, the Change Manager becomes the representative of the requestor when dealing with the implementation team. The total package of project requirements laid out by the Change Manager is called the Forward Schedule of Changes .

The Change Manager supervises the installation and testing of the change, which should already have been tested by the implementation team. Once the Change Manager has confirmed that the solution conforms with the goals laid out in the approved request, the CAB or the requestor is called in to perform acceptance testing and sign off on the change. The final phase of acceptance testing could create feedback into redevelopment until the scope of the project is fully completed.

The Change Manager has to guide the expectation of the requestor in order to avoid the acceptance of the solution from dragging on into a continuous improvement scenario – this is out of scope for Change Management in ITIL.

​Succeeding with ITIL Change Management

The key to success when implementing ITIL Change Management is to recognize that it is a set of guidelines , it is not a law. Remember that this framework is there to help you and you will see flexibility in the strategy once you look into the system.

Be particularly aware of the different types of change and the varying procedures that need to be followed for each. You don’t need to call in a Director to set up a Change Advisory Board if you just need to set up a maintenance contract for printers. You don’t need to go through a rigid approvals process just to get the DBA to expand the database’s disc space allocation.

ITIL Change Management gives you a formula for breaking down large tasks and allocating responsibilities and documentation expectations for each type of change.

ITIL Change Management FAQs

What is itil change management process.

The ITIL change management process is concerned with the priorities and procedures that are involved in creating a system change in IT infrastructure. While it is acceptable that a system periodically needs to change in order to keep up with business requirements, those changes need to be conducted in a way that results in a stable and reliable system. The change should not increase risk.

What are the 3 types of changes as per ITIL?

ITIL definitions describe three types of change:

  • Standard / Normal
  • Urgent / Emergency

Standard and normal changes are usually counted as two separate types. A standard change is routine, not a large upheaval, and can be implemented within the Service Desk team. A normal change is larger and will involve members of other departments. A major change is a big undertaking that will create a new service or radically alter existing IT infrastructure. An urgent change is usually in response to s sudden system failure that needs to be corrected to keep the business operating.

What are the 5 stages of ITIL?

ITIL is divided into five stages:

  • Service Operations

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Change Evaluation Report

The Comprehensive Change Evaluation Report is a tool that allows organizations to thoroughly analyze the impact of a significant transformation within their structure.Organizational transformations involve a wide range of changes, such as mergers, acquisitions, downsizing, or implementing new technologies. These changes often affect various aspects of the organization, including employee morale, productivity, and overall performance.

ITSM Templates

The importance of evaluating organizational transformation

  • Measure Progress: Evaluation helps to assess the progress of the organizational transformation. It enables leaders to understand whether the desired outcomes are being achieved or not. By measuring progress, organizations can identify areas of success and areas that need improvement. This information can be used to make necessary adjustments and course corrections to ensure the transformation is on track.
  • Identify Barriers: Evaluation helps to identify barriers or obstacles that may be hindering the success of organizational transformation. It helps leaders to understand the root causes of any challenges or issues that are impeding progress. This knowledge can then be used to develop strategies and solutions to address these barriers effectively.
  • Increase Accountability: Evaluation holds individuals and teams accountable for their roles in the organizational transformation. It provides a clear picture of the responsibilities and expectations of each stakeholder involved. This accountability helps to ensure that everyone is working towards the common goals and objectives of the transformation.
  • Learn from Mistakes: Evaluation allows organizations to learn from their mistakes. It provides an opportunity for reflection and analysis of what went wrong and why. By understanding the reasons for failure or setbacks, organizations can avoid repeating the same mistakes in the future. This learning process is crucial for continuous improvement and growth.

Methodology for conducting a comprehensive change evaluation

  • Define the Objectives: Clearly establish the goals and objectives of the change initiative. This will help determine the focus and scope of the evaluation.
  • Identify Evaluation Criteria: Define the criteria against which the change effort will be evaluated. These criteria can be related to factors like project outcomes, stakeholder satisfaction, cost-benefit analysis, or any other relevant metrics.
  • Design Evaluation Methods: Decide on suitable evaluation methods and tools to gather data. This can include surveys, interviews, observations, document analysis, or even quantitative analysis using statistical techniques.
  • Collect Data: Implement the chosen evaluation methods to collect data from the affected stakeholders, such as employees, managers, customers, or any other relevant parties. It is essential to ensure data collection is unbiased and representative of the affected population.
  • Analyze Data: Once the data is collected, carefully analyze it using appropriate techniques. For quantitative data, statistical analysis can be used, while qualitative data can be analyzed thematically or through coding.

Analyzing the impact on employees and their engagement

  • Job satisfaction: If an event or change in the workplace enhances job satisfaction, such as receiving recognition for good work or being offered new growth opportunities, it is likely to positively impact employee engagement. Conversely, events that decrease job satisfaction, such as layoffs or increased workloads, may lead to decreased employee engagement.
  • Communication and transparency: A lack of communication or transparency can negatively impact employee engagement. Employees who feel well-informed about company updates and decisions are more likely to feel engaged and connected to their work.
  • Leadership and management: The behavior and actions of leaders and managers can significantly impact employee engagement. Supportive and empowering leaders who provide clear expectations, feedback, and opportunities for growth tend to have more engaged employees.
  • Work-life balance: Events or changes that affect work-life balance, such as flexible work arrangements or the introduction of work-from-home options, can positively impact employee engagement by improving overall well-being and reducing job stress.
  • Organizational culture: The overall culture and values of an organization can influence employee engagement. A positive and inclusive culture that values employee input, provides a sense of belonging, and promotes a healthy work environment tends to result in higher levels of employee engagement.

impact on operational efficiency and productivity

Assessing the impact on operational efficiency and productivity

  • Time and resource management: Evaluate how effectively time and resources are being managed within the operations. This can be measured by analyzing production timelines, resource allocation, and waste management.
  • Utilization of technology: Determine whether the adoption of technology has improved operational efficiency. Assess the impact of automation, software systems, and digital tools on streamlining processes, reducing errors, and enhancing productivity.
  • Employee satisfaction and engagement: Measure the morale and motivation levels of employees. Low employee satisfaction can negatively impact productivity and efficiency. Evaluate factors such as communication, work-life balance, training, and development opportunities.
  • Key performance indicators (KPIs): Identify and monitor relevant KPIs within the operations. This may include metrics such as output per unit of input, cycle time, error rates, and customer satisfaction levels. Assess the improvement or deterioration in these indicators over time.
  • Process optimization: Analyze the effectiveness of operational processes and workflows. Identify bottlenecks, inefficiencies, or redundancies that may hinder productivity. Look for opportunities to streamline and optimize these processes through continuous improvement initiatives.

Evaluating the impact on customer satisfaction and loyalty

  • Customer Feedback: Collecting and analyzing customer feedback through surveys, reviews, and social media can provide valuable insights into their satisfaction levels and loyalty towards the brand. This feedback can help identify areas for improvement or potential issues that may impact satisfaction and loyalty.
  • Net Promoter Score (NPS): NPS measures the likelihood of customers recommending a brand to others on a scale of 0-10. A higher NPS indicates higher customer satisfaction and loyalty. Regularly monitoring NPS scores can provide a benchmark for measuring the impact of initiatives on customer satisfaction.
  • Customer Retention Rate: Evaluating the rate at which customers continue to do business with a company over time can indicate their loyalty and satisfaction. Increasing customer retention rates generally indicate higher satisfaction levels and stronger loyalty.
  • Repeat Purchase Rate: Tracking the frequency at which customers make repeat purchases from a company helps evaluate their loyalty. Higher repeat purchase rates suggest that customers are satisfied with the product or service and are likely to remain loyal to the brand.
  • Customer Complaints and Returns: Monitoring the number and nature of customer complaints and returns provides insights into areas where satisfaction might be lacking. High levels of complaints or returns could indicate dissatisfaction that needs to be addressed to improve overall satisfaction and loyalty.

Continuous evaluation is crucial for successful organizational transformation for several reasons. Firstly, it allows the organization to monitor the progress and effectiveness of the transformation process.

By regularly assessing the implementation of changes and the impact they are having on the organization, leaders can make necessary adjustments and course corrections to ensure the transformation is on track and meeting its objectives.

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ITIL Change Management: A Comprehensive Guide

Wondering how ITIL Change Management can be useful for your business? In this blog, learn about ITIL Change Management, and attain full insights on definition, implementation process, benefits, best practices, and challenges. Read Now!

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However, if your organisation hasn’t leveraged the benefits of implementing ITIL to manage change, it is time you learn everything about it. In this blog, we'll delve deep into ITIL Change Management, its processes, benefits, and best practices to help you leverage its full potential. After mastering the ITIL 4 Foundation, the next step is exploring what next after ITIL 4 Foundation . So, dive in to learn more!

Table of Contents  

1) What is ITIL Change Management?

2)  Different Types of Changes

3)  ITIL Change Management process 

4) Change Management features

5) Benefits of ITIL Change Management 

6) Best practices for ITIL Change Management 

7) Common challenges in ITIL Change Management 

8) Conclusion 

What is ITIL Change Management?  

ITIL Change Management is a crucial discipline within the IT Service Management (ITSM) framework known as Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL). It can be defined as a structured process that aims to assess, plan, authorise, and implement changes in a controlled manner within the IT environment of an organisation. It involves evaluating the impact of changes, managing associated risks, and ensuring that changes align with business objectives and IT service quality a crucial aspect in the broader context of ITIL Careers  Considering ITIL Advantages and Disadvantages , organisations implementing ITIL Change Management benefit from improved service delivery and increased efficiency.

Understanding the difference between ITSM vs ITIL is crucial for implementing effective  Change Management within this framework. ITIL Guiding Principles serves as the foundation for steering through changes seamlessly, ensuring that each change aligns with the core principles of ITIL.

Effective Change Management with ITIL, including the ITIL Problem Management roles and responsibilities , including the ITIL Problem Management roles and responsibilities, including ITIL 4 Demand Management , addresses these challenges and mitigates risks.. It helps organisations maintain stability, improve service quality, and ensure that changes are implemented smoothly with minimal impact on business operations.

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Different types of Changes in ITIL

Having delved into ITIL Change Management process definition, we will now move onto listing the types of Changes.  

Different types of Changes in ITIL

1) Standard Change

A standard change represents routine and low-risk modifications in an organisation's processes or systems. These alterations are well-defined, with established procedures for implementation.

Typically minor in scope, they require minimal approvals due to their repetitive nature. Common examples include software updates, hardware replacements, and user account creations.

2) Normal Change

Normal Changes encompass alterations that are more substantial than Standard Changes but still manageable in terms of risk. They involve moderate complexity and require a formal review and approval process. These Changes demand careful planning, impact assessment, and coordination among different departments or teams.

3) Major Change

Major Changes signify significant transformations that impact multiple facets of an organisation. These alterations highly impact the organisation and demand comprehensive assessment, planning, and stakeholder involvement.

The complexity involved necessitates a structured Change Management approach, often involving a dedicated change board for approvals, which aligns with the principles of ITIL Asset Management . Major Changes might pertain to strategic shifts, structural reconfigurations, or technology overhauls. Effective communication and meticulous planning are paramount to mitigate risks and maximise the positive outcomes associated with such pivotal changes.

4) Emergency Change

Emergency Changes are rapid-response modifications enacted to address critical situations, such as system failures or security breaches. Characterised by urgency, they aim to swiftly contain and rectify the issues at hand. While the approval process might be expedited, documentation remains essential to ensure accountability and future reference. 

This approach aligns with the principles of the ITIL Certification Path , emphasising the importance of communication and continuous improvement in managing and preventing IT service disruptions.

Gain an understanding of the important concepts, principles, and processes of ITIL Change Management with our ITIL® 4 Foundation Certification Training today!

ITIL Change Management process  

ITIL Change Management process guide

1) Request For Change (RFC)  

The Change Management process begins with the submission of a Request for Change (RFC). An RFC is a formal document that captures the details of the proposed change, including its description, purpose, scope, and potential impact. The RFC is the primary communication channel between those requesting the change and the Change Management team. 

2) Change evaluation  

After receiving an RFC, the Change Management team evaluates the proposed change. This evaluation involves assessing the potential risks, impact on services, resource requirements, and alignment with business objectives. The team considers factors such as technical feasibility, cost implications, and compliance with regulatory requirements.   

During the evaluation phase, the team may collaborate with other stakeholders, such as the Change Advisory Board (CAB), to gather additional insights and expertise. The goal is to decide whether the change should proceed or require further analysis and refinement. 

3) Change approval  

Once the change has been thoroughly evaluated, the team for managing the change, seeks approval from the appropriate stakeholders. This typically involves presenting the proposed change and the evaluation findings and recommendations to the CAB or other relevant decision-making bodies.  

The CAB reviews the proposed change in light of business priorities, operational impacts, resource availability, and potential risks. Based on this evaluation, the CAB approves or rejects the change. The decision is communicated back to the team that manages the change and the requester of the change. 

4) Change implementation  

The Change Management team proceeds with the implementation phase if the change is approved. This stage involves planning the necessary activities, coordinating resources, and executing the change in a controlled manner.   

The implementation plan may include scheduling downtime, testing and validation, coordinating with stakeholders, and ensuring proper documentation and communication.  

During the implementation phase, the team that manages change closely monitors the progress of the change, addressing any unforeseen issues or risks that may arise. The team also ensures that the change is executed as planned, adhering to established guidelines and minimising disruptions to IT services. 

5) Change review  

After the change has been implemented, a post-implementation review takes place. This review evaluates the effectiveness of the change, its impact on services, and whether the desired outcomes have been achieved. The Change Management team gathers feedback from relevant stakeholders and assesses lessons learned from the change process.   

The insights gained from the post-implementation review are valuable for continuous improvement. They inform future activities for managing change, refine processes, identify areas for enhancement, and ensure that changes are implemented more effectively.   

By following the process of Change Management in ITIL - Request for Change (RFC), Change Evaluation, Change Approval, Change Implementation, and Change Review - organisations can systematically manage changes, maintain control, and minimise risks associated with modifications to their IT environments.

Change Management features

It’s time to look at some of the ITIL Change Management features that you must understand to implement this framework:

1) Change creation and logging

Creating and logging organisational changes involves systematically recording proposed alterations and detailing their purpose, scope, and expected impacts. This clear record supports effective Change Management by promoting transparent communication, aiding progress tracking, and establishing accountabilities. Proper logging ensures changes are well-documented from inception, serving as a reference for evaluations, approvals, and implementation.

2) Change planning and evaluation

Change Management relies on robust planning and evaluation. Organisations meticulously outline resources, timelines, and actions during planning, while evaluation assesses risks, benefits, and alignment with strategic goals. This thorough examination safeguards against disruptions, providing insights for informed decisions, adaptive strategies, and proactive issue resolution during implementation.

3) Change approval

Change approval is a crucial step involving stakeholder scrutiny and board approval. Presenting a compelling business case with rationale, expected outcomes, and alignment with goals is vital. Effective communication gains consensus.

Approval guarantees alignment with strategic vision, optimal resource allocation, and a structured, accountable approach to change, allowing only high-benefit, low-risk changes to proceed.

4) Coordinating change implementation

Streamlining approved changes requires adept coordination. This involves assigning tasks, allocating resources, and aligning teams for a smooth transition. Clear communication is vital to managing expectations and addressing issues promptly. Effective coordination minimises disruption, ensures adherence to the plan, and maximises successful change implementation, maintaining operational continuity.

5) Change review and closure

Change review and closure mark the culmination of the change management process. After implementation, organisations assess whether the change achieved its intended outcomes and whether any adjustments are required. This involves comparing actual results against initial expectations, analysing the effectiveness of the change, and identifying areas for improvement. 

The review phase informs decisions regarding whether the change is considered successful and can be formally closed, or whether further refinements are needed. By actively reflecting on the change's impact and lessons learned, organisations enhance their ability to adapt and refine their change management strategies in the future.

6) Change workflows

Change workflows provide a structured framework for managing the entire ITIL Service Lifecycle of a change. These predefined sequences of steps guide change requests from initiation to closure. Workflows ensure consistency, transparency, and accountability by establishing a standardised process for evaluating, approving, and implementing changes. 

They serve as a roadmap, helping teams navigate complex change management tasks, adhere to established procedures, and facilitate collaboration across various departments. By adhering to change workflows, organisations streamline their change management efforts, reduce ambiguity, and enhance their ability to manage changes efficiently and effectively.

Benefits of ITIL Change Management  

 ITIL Change Management Benefits

1) Increased efficiency  

One of the primary benefits of Change Management in ITIL is improved efficiency in managing changes. By establishing a structured and standardised process for managing change, organisations can streamline the handling of changes, reducing the time and effort required for evaluation, planning, and implementation. This increased efficiency enables IT teams to respond promptly to change requests, minimising delays and maximising productivity. 

2) Risk reduction  

Change Management in ITIL is crucial in mitigating risks associated with changes. Organisations can proactively identify and address potential issues by evaluating the potential impact and assessing the risks before implementing changes. This proactive approach helps prevent service disruptions, minimise system failures, and reduce the likelihood of security breaches. 

3) Improved service quality  

Effective Change Management in ITIL contributes to improved service quality. By adhering to a standardised change process, organisations can implement changes with minimal disruption to critical services. This results in enhanced stability, reliability, and availability of IT services, leading to increased customer satisfaction.  

4) Enhanced communication  

Implementing Change Management in ITIL fosters effective communication and collaboration among various stakeholders. Organisations can enhance transparency by involving IT teams, business units, and decision-makers in managing change and ensuring everyone is aligned and informed about the changes. This collaborative approach facilitates better decision-making, reduces misunderstandings, and promotes a shared understanding of the impact and risks associated with changes. 

5) Continuous improvement  

ITIL Change Management supports a culture of continuous improvement within organisations. Through post-implementation reviews and feedback gathering, organisations can identify areas for improvement, learn from past experiences, and refine their processes of managing change. This iterative approach enables organisations to enhance their capabilities of managing change, adapt to evolving needs, and drive ongoing improvement in managing changes effectively.

Best practices for ITIL Change Management  

Best practices for ITIL Change Management

Implementing best practices for Change Management in ITIL can greatly enhance the effectiveness and success of the process within an organisation. Here are some of the effective practices to consider:   

a) Establish a well-defined Change Management process : A crucial best practice is establishing an effective process of managing change tailored to the organisation's needs. This process should outline the steps, roles, and responsibilities of managing changes. All stakeholders should document, communicate, and understand it, ensuring consistency and clarity throughout the Change Management lifecycle.  

b) Classify and prioritise changes : To effectively manage changes, it is essential to classify and prioritise them based on their impact and urgency. This classification allows organisations to allocate appropriate resources, prioritise changes based on business needs, and focus on high-priority changes that require immediate attention. Common change classification categories include emergency, standard, and normal changes.  

c) Implement a Change Advisory Board (CAB) : A recommended best practice is establishing a CAB with representatives from various teams and stakeholders. The CAB provides expertise, diverse perspectives, and informed decision-making during the change evaluation and approval. It ensures that changes align with business objectives, are thoroughly evaluated, and receive approvals before implementation.  

d) Standardise change models and templates : Developing and utilising standardised change models and templates can significantly streamline the process of managing change. These models provide predefined procedures, workflows, and guidelines for common changes. By using standardised templates, organisations can ensure consistency, reduce errors, and save time when planning and executing changes.  

e) Conduct thorough Change Impact Assessments (CIA) : Performing comprehensive change impact assessments is critical to understanding the potential consequences of proposed changes. It evaluates the impact on IT services, infrastructure, systems, processes, and stakeholders. This assessment helps identify potential risks, dependencies, and necessary mitigations. Thus, organisations can make informed decisions about change approvals and implementation strategies.  

f) Communicate effectively : Effective communication is vital throughout the Change Management process. Organisations should establish clear communication channels to inform stakeholders about upcoming changes, their impact, and any necessary actions or precautions. Regular updates, status reports, and notifications help ensure that everyone involved knows about the changes and their implications, promoting transparency and minimising disruptions.  

g) Document and track changes : Maintaining accurate and comprehensive documentation is essential for successful Change Management. Organisations should document all changes, including their rationale, implementation details, and results. This documentation is a historical record, aids future decision-making, and supports audits or compliance requirements. Additionally, organisations should establish a system to track and monitor changes throughout their lifecycle, ensuring visibility and accountability.  

h) Perform post-implementation reviews : Conducting post-implementation reviews after implemented changes is a valuable best practice. These reviews help assess the effectiveness and outcomes of the changes, identify lessons learned, and identify areas for improvement. By gathering feedback and evaluating the success of changes, organisations can continuously enhance their Change Management processes and increase overall efficiency. 

Equip yourself with the knowledge to excel in managing changes within your IT environment – register for our ITIL® Certification Training now!

Common challenges in ITIL Change Management  

Challenges in ITIL Change Management

1) Resistance to change : People within an organisation may resist changes due to fear of the unknown, concerns about disruptions to their work, or a lack of understanding of the benefits of change. Overcoming resistance requires effective communication and clear explanations of the reasons for change and its positive impact.  

2) Limited resources : Limited resources, such as budget constraints, inadequate staffing, or time constraints, can hinder the effective implementation of ITIL Change Management.

More resources may delay change evaluation, approval processes, or the inability to allocate dedicated personnel for change implementation. Organisations should strive to give appropriate resources and prioritise change initiatives based on business needs and available capacities.  

3) Complexity of IT environment : Modern IT environments are often complex and interconnected, with numerous systems, applications, and dependencies. Managing changes in such complex environments can be challenging.

Understanding the relationships and dependencies between different components becomes crucial to ensure that changes do not inadvertently impact other services or systems. Organisations should invest in comprehensive configuration management and mapping to mitigate this challenge.  

4) Lack of documentation : Inadequate documentation and knowledge management practices can impede effective Change Management. When documentation needs to be completed or updated, it becomes easier to accurately evaluate the impact of proposed changes. Establishing robust documentation and ITIL Knowledge Management processes helps address this challenge and supports informed decision-making. 

5) Maintaining compliance : Organisations operating in regulated industries face additional challenges in ITIL Change Management. Compliance with industry-specific regulations, security standards, and legal requirements necessitates careful planning and documentation of changes. Follow compliance requirements to avoid serious consequences. 

Conclusion  

ITIL Change Management enables increased efficiency by streamlining the handling of changes, reducing delays, and maximising productivity. We hope this blog has enhanced your understanding of managing change in ITIL , the process and benefits of implementing it, and more. 

Wish to become a certified ITIL 4 Strategist.- sign up for our ITIL® 4 Strategist: Direct, Plan And Improve DPI Course now!  

Frequently Asked Questions

To excel as an ITIL Transition Manager, master ITIL frameworks, gain hands-on experience, cultivate strong communication skills, and stay abreast of industry trends. Pursue relevant certifications, build a robust network, and demonstrate a proactive approach to managing transitions.

Succeeding in an ITIL Change Management leadership role requires honing skills in strategic planning, communication, team collaboration, and problem-solving. Prioritise adaptability, customer focus, and continuous improvement. Acquire ITIL certifications to showcase expertise and stay at the forefront of best practices.

Discover an array of ITIL Certification Courses at The Knowledge Academy, featuring specialised training in ITIL 4 Foundation, Support CDS, and High velocity IT Training. Designed for different skill levels, our courses provide the necessary technical expertise to meet ITIL Incident Management .

Whether you're starting out or looking to upgrade your skills, immerse yourself in our IT Service Management Blogs for further understanding and expertise. Embark on a journey with us to elevate your ITIL Certification proficiency!  

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What's Changed with Change in ITIL 4?

Home Blog IT Service Management What's Changed with Change in ITIL 4?

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Early in 2019, ITIL 4, a new edition of the ITIL IT service management best practice framework, was launched. ITIL is utilized by millions of individuals across the world for anything from simple event management to the administration of massive enterprise IT operations, so it was major news.

Change management is one of the most often used and referred to components of  ITIL best practice . This article examines what changed in ITIL 4 about change management, highlighting the key distinctions.

What is Change Enablement?

By ensuring that vulnerabilities have been correctly assessed, permitting changes to continue, and monitoring the changed timeline, the change enablement approach aims to increase the number of successful IT changes.  

It's crucial to understand the difference between  change enablement  and organizational change management. Change enablement normally focuses on changes in goods and services, whereas organizational change management controls the human elements of action to ensure that improvements and organizational transformation plans are executed successfully.

What is Organizational Change Management?

Where services are concerned, people will be involved. And the approach of “managing the people side of any change” is what Organizational Change Management deals with.   

Changing processes may appear easy in theory, but it is people who ultimately put it into practice. OCM practice needs to ensure that there is adequate communication about the change, a buy-in for the necessity of change, definite leadership around change, empowerment through training etc. to implement the change, resistance-management where necessary, and reinforcement to “embed the change into the business as usual (BAU)”.

What Changed with Change Management in ITIL 4

Before moving on to understanding what has changed with change management in ITIL 4, it is crucial to understand exactly  what is the definition of change in ITIL 4 . Within ITIL, change enablement is a crucial service management approach. We can introduce service upgrades as well as other service management methods here. A change is described as an addition, alteration, or removal of anything that has the potential to affect services directly or indirectly.  

Changes to IT infrastructure, apps, documentation, procedures, supplier relationships, and any other important components of the service are often included. Although some IT organizations focus solely on hardware and software change enablement, it is necessary to keep in mind that other aspects play an essential part in service development and implementation and changes to them might have a detrimental impact on consumers.  

So, if you are wondering, "Exactly  what is change in ITIL ?" here is what has changed in ITIL 4:  

ITIL Change Management

1. The Benefits of changing your name

Until industry discussion provoked a reconsideration, the change enablement technique was referred to as change control. The decision to abandon the term change management reflects the extent of ITIL scope having been expanded with the introduction of ITIL 4.  

ITIL 4 acknowledges the application of service management and best practices to other business processes, whereas prior editions of ITIL concentrated on IT service management. As a result, the risk of misinterpretation with the people-focused version of change management – which ITIL 4 now incorporates as part of its organizational change management practice guidelines – has to be taken into account.  

As a result, the change management method is no longer in use, and the change enablement approach has taken its place. The goal of the change enablement practice is to maximize the amount of successful service and product changes by ensuring that risks have been adequately evaluated, approving changes to continue, and managing the changed timeline.

2. Change enablement’s “location” and process versus practice

Change management was placed in the service transition stage of the  service lifecycle  according to the ITIL v3 best practice framework. Change enablement is currently part of the ITIL Service Value System's service management practices component.  

The transition from processes to practices is a significant difference between ITIL v3 and ITIL 4. This is fascinating as practices encompass a lot more than just processes and workflows. ITIL's four aspects of service management are represented in the practices. If you're not familiar with ITIL v3, the aspects are simply an expansion of the four Ps. The following are the four aspects:  

  • People and organizations  
  • technology and information  
  • Business associates and vendors  
  • Value streams and processes  

3. The change authority

The word change authority is a new term for change permission. One of the most common complaints about ITIL v3 was that every change had to go via the change advisory board. It's not true at all!  

What about routine maintenance or emergency repairs in the middle of the night? Introducing the notion of a change authority allows individuals to be more flexible when it comes to permission, such as:  

  • Delegated authority  
  • Standard changes  
  • Peer evaluations  
  • Exceptions in the business world  

If you want to know more about the ITIL 4 change enablement practice, Check out    ITIL foundation training course  online, the course will help you to learn about ITIL 4 changes and help you to understand the key difference.  

4. Emphasis on continuous integration

To align with the company and generate value, change must flow. While a standard change may be initiated manually by raising a change request, the ITIL 4 version of change enablement emphasizes the need for automation.  

When leveraged properly, technology can be used to build an automated pipeline that enables continuous integration and delivery, automating the majority of the change enablement process.  

5. Contribution of change enablement to the Service Value Chain

The transition from the service lifecycle to the ITIL Service Value System is a significant change between ITIL v3 and ITIL 4.  ITIL 4  includes the Service Value System, which promotes value co-creation. It demonstrates how an organization's many components and operations work together to create value. The Service Value Chain is at the core of the Service Value System.

ITIL Service Value Chain

The change enablement practice is involved in all the activities of the service value chain as shown below:    

You can find out more about it through one of the many    IT service management courses online  provided by Knowledge Hut.  

Change Types

ITIL V4 Change Types

We define three types of change in ITIL, each of which is managed differently, namely standard, normal, and emergency changes.    

Change Authority

A person or organization that authorizes a change is known as the change authority. Depending on the nature of the change and the organizational style and culture, this might be a team, supervisor, management, CEO, board, customer, or regulator. To ensure that change enablement is both efficient and effective, the right change of authority must be granted to each type of change. It's pointless to create a board to assess every low-risk item that can be accepted locally.  

Decentralizing change approval is prevalent in high-velocity businesses, making peer assessment a top predictor of excellent performance. An agile product team, for example, would decide which aspects of the product backlog to handle in a sprint, while an agile product manager would decide which client requirements to put in the product backlog. Systemic approval can be established by organizations embracing DevOps principles based on the effectiveness of computerized checks in the continuous integration/continuous deployment pipeline.  

Change Communication

Regardless of who is in charge of change, they may need to communicate broadly within the company and with important stakeholders. To avoid surprises, it is critical to prepare all parties involved and those who can be impacted in advance. For example, effective communication with the Service Desk is necessary to ensure that high call numbers do not come as an overwhelming surprise as a result of a failed change. Marketing teams may want to avoid running campaigns planned at a time when important services are likely to be down. When a large number of people with specialized expertise are needed, such as when analyzing the risk of a complicated change, good communication is very vital.  

The change schedule is used to help in the planning of changes, communication, dispute resolution, and resource allocation. It can also be used to offer information for incident management, issue management, and improvement planning once changes have been implemented. It's critical to communicate the changed timeline to all key stakeholders engaged in the adjustments using communication methods that are likely to reach them quickly.  

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Keeping Pace with Change

In a nutshell, design and transition, obtain/build, deliver and support and improve are the major areas of change emphasis. We hope this article has helped you to understand all about What's Changed with Change in ITIL 4.  

To know more about ITIL 4 checkout  KnowledgeHut ITIL Foundation Training Course  with Industry Experienced Faculty. 24*7 technical support and lifetime access to coursework.  Learn at your own pace. Start today and improve your skills.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

The new edition fosters the integration of Agile and DevOps into ITSM initiatives and has fewer silos, better collaboration, and easier communication throughout the whole enterprise. ITIL 4 is intended to be more adaptable and adjustable. 

A change is described as the addition, alteration, or removal of anything that has the potential to affect services directly or indirectly. 

Change enablement according to ITIL v4- is defined as increasing the number of successful service and product changes in three areas: Ascertaining that the hazards have been correctly evaluated. Changes can be implemented. Keeping track of the transition process. 

Here are the 5 main advantages of implementing a change schedule in ITIL 4: 

  • Smoother Transitions 
  • Improved Project Outcomes 
  • Internal and External Alignment 
  • Managing Change Management 
  • Stronger Confidence 

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  • Set stakeholder expectations correctly and provide effective and accurate information to Change Management to make sure that changes which adversely affect service capability and introduce risk are not transitioned unchecked.
  • Evaluate the intended effects of a service change and as much of the unintended effects as is reasonably practical given capacity, resource and organizational constraints.
  • Provide good-quality outputs so that Change Management can expedite an effective decision about whether or not a service change is to be authorized.
  • Change Evaluation occurs both pre and post implementation.

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ITIL Change Request – Definition, Process and Best Practices

Information technology is changing every day. 

Business companies, public and private organizations need a structured process that help them on the way to making changes in information technology. 

One of that processes or frameworks is Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) that organizations are using to manage and control changes to their IT systems, services, and infrastructure. 

ITIL framework has many steps and processes which are linked with each other to manage and smooth delivery of change . One of that steps is ITIL change request. 

In this blog post. We’ll explain the ITIL framework and its steps specifically ITIL change request and what is process of ITIL change request and what are best practices to make ITIL change request. 

Let’s dig deeper to have a complete understanding of these concepts. 

What is ITIL Framework and ITIL Change Management?

The ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) framework is a set of best practices for IT service management (ITSM) that provides a common framework for managing and delivering IT services. 

ITIL is designed to help organizations align their IT strategies and goals with the overall objectives of the business, and to improve the quality and value of IT services. 

ITIL change management is one of the key components of the ITIL framework. It is the process of managing and controlling changes to IT systems, services, and infrastructure. 

The purpose of ITIL change management is to minimize the risk of disruptions and negative impacts on IT services, and to ensure that changes are aligned with the overall IT strategy and organizational goals. 

The change management process includes steps such as identifying the need for a change, assessing and evaluating the change, authorizing and implementing the change, and reviewing and closing the change request. 

ITIL change management has many types and each one comes with its own advantages and disadvantages. Organizations must understand these before making big changes in their IT systems. 

ITIL Change Request- Definition 

ITIL change request is a formal request to make a change to an IT system, service, or infrastructure. 

It is a document that describes the anticipated change, the reasons for that change, assessment of risks of ITIL change and impact of that change on the IT system, service and the organization as a whole. It also identifies what resources will be required to implement that change. 

The ITIL change request process is designed to ensure that changes are managed in a controlled, efficient, and effective manner, minimizing the risk of disruptions and negative impacts on IT services. 

ITIL Change Request Process 

Following are the four main steps involved in ITIL change request process:

1. Identification of the need for a change

The identification of the need for a change is the first step in the ITIL change request process. This step involves identifying and documenting the reasons why a change is necessary. The identification of the need for a change can come from various sources, such as customers, users, IT staff, or business leaders.

During this step, the change initiator should gather information about the current state of the IT service or system and the desired state after the change is implemented. They should also identify the impact of the change on the IT service and the organization as a whole. This information should be used to create a detailed change request document that describes the proposed change, the reasons for the change, and the impact of the change on the IT service and the organization.

It is also important that the change initiator evaluates the priority and urgency of the change, this will determine the change category (standard, emergency, normal, etc) and the change type (minor, major, etc) which will further determine the change management process, approvals, and documentation required.

Once the need for the change has been identified and the change request document has been completed, the change request is submitted to the appropriate change management authority for review and assessment.

2. Initial assessment and evaluation of the change

The initial assessment and evaluation of the change involves reviewing the change request document and assessing the proposed change to determine whether it is feasible, appropriate, and aligned with the overall IT strategy and organizational goals. The change management authority will assess the risks and benefits of the change.

The change management authority will also determine if the change request is in line with the change management procedures and policies and if it needs further approvals based on the change category and type. They may also consult with other stakeholders such as IT staff, business leaders, or external experts to gather additional information or feedback.

Once the initial assessment and evaluation is complete, the change management authority will make a decision on whether to authorize, reject or ask for more information on the change request. If the change request is authorized, it is then passed on to the implementation step of the ITIL change request process.

3. Authorization and implementation of the change

The authorization and implementation are about obtaining formal approval for the proposed change , and then executing the change in a controlled and efficient manner.

Once the change request is authorized by the change management authority, the IT team responsible for implementing the change will be given the necessary approvals and permissions to carry out the change. Before the change is implemented, the IT team will typically create a detailed plan outlining the steps that will be taken to implement the change, including any testing, backups, and rollback procedures that will be put in place to ensure the integrity of the IT service during the change process.

During the implementation of the change, the IT team will carry out the necessary actions to implement the change, such as updating software, configuring systems, or installing new hardware. They will also monitor the change to ensure that it is progressing as planned and that any issues or problems are identified and addressed quickly.

4. Review and closure of the change request

The review and closure of the change request is the final step in the ITIL change request process. This step involves evaluating the outcome of the change and documenting the results, and then closing the change request.

During the review step, the IT team will review the change to ensure that it was implemented successfully, and that the IT service is functioning as expected. They will also review the change request documentation to ensure that it is accurate and complete. They will also conduct a post-implementation review (PIR) to check if the change has met its objectives, if the benefits are achieved, and if there are any issues that need to be addressed.

If any issues are identified, the IT team will take appropriate action to resolve them and document the results. Once the review is complete, and the change is considered successful, the change request is closed.

The closure of the change request is the formal process of documenting the change and its outcomes, lessons learned, and any follow-up actions that are required. This documentation is important as it serves as a record of the change, and can be used to improve future changes and to measure the success of the change management process.

It’s important to note that the closure of the change request is not the end of the change management process, as it is essential to keep an eye on the impact of the change in the long term, and to conduct a continual service improvement process, using the feedback and results of the change to improve future changes.

Best practices for ITIL change request

Clear and detailed documentation

Clear and detailed documentation is a best practice in the ITIL change request process. It is essential to ensure that all information related to the change request is accurately and completely recorded, so that the change can be managed and controlled in an effective manner.

This documentation should be complete, accurate and up-to-date, it should also include the change category and type, the change initiator, the change management authority and any approvals needed.

It’s also important to document the plan for implementing the change, including the specific steps that will be taken, any testing, backups, and rollback procedures that will be put in place, and any other relevant information. 

Effective communication and collaboration

Effective communication and collaboration are key best practices in the ITIL change request process. Effective communication ensures that all stakeholders involved in the change process are informed and kept up-to-date with the progress of the change, while collaboration ensures that all stakeholders work together to achieve a common goal.

Effective communication in the ITIL change request process involves sharing information about the change request with all stakeholders, including the change management authority, the IT team, and any other relevant parties such as business leaders, customers, or external experts. 

This communication should include information about the proposed change, the reasons for the change, the impact of the change on the IT service and the organization as a whole, and the resources required to implement the change.

Collaboration in the ITIL change request process involves working together with all stakeholders to achieve a common goal. Collaboration also involves working together with the IT team to plan and implement the change, and to review and close the change request.

Risk assessment and management

Risk assessment helps organizations to identify, evaluate and manage the potential risks associated with a change, in order to minimize the impact on IT services and the organization as a whole.

The risks can be categorized as IT service risks, IT infrastructure risks or business risks.

Once the risks have been identified, risk management is used to minimize the impact of the risks. This includes taking steps to mitigate, transfer, or accept the risk. 

Risk mitigation involves taking steps to reduce the likelihood or impact of the risk, such as implementing security controls or testing the change in a non-production environment. Risk transfer involves transferring the risk to a third party, such as an insurance company or a vendor. And risk acceptance involves deciding to accept the risk as a consequence of the change.

Regular review and evaluation

Regular review and evaluation in the ITIL change request process involves regularly monitoring the progress of the change, and evaluating the outcomes of the change to ensure that it is meeting its objectives. This includes conducting a post-implementation review (PIR) which is a formal process of evaluating the change after it has been implemented.

It’s also important to evaluate the change management process itself, to ensure that it is functioning as intended, and that it is meeting the organization’s IT service management policies and procedures. This can include conducting regular audits or reviews of the change management process, and making improvements as necessary.

This can involve monitoring performance metrics, such as uptime, response time, and error rates, and taking appropriate action if there are any issues.

Final Words 

The ITIL change request process is a critical component of ITIL change management and can help organizations improve the efficiency, effectiveness, and security of their IT systems and services. By following best practices and addressing common challenges, organizations can ensure that changes are implemented smoothly and effectively, and that the overall quality of their IT services is improved.

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Tahir Abbas

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Objective: ITIL Process Evaluation aims to evaluate processes on a regular basis. This includes identifying areas where the targeted process metrics are not reached, and holding regular benchmarkings, audits, maturity assessments and reviews.

Part of : Continual Service Improvement

Process Owner : Process Architect

  • 1 Process Description
  • 2 Sub-Processes
  • 3 Definitions
  • 5 Roles | Responsibilities

Process Description

Process Evaluation ITIL

A key change between ITIL V2 and ITIL V3 has been a new focus on continually improving services and processes. Service and process Evaluations are an essential element of "Continual Service Improvement (CSI)".

To reflect the new structure of Service Strategy processes in ITIL 2011 the interfaces of the process have been adapted. The process overview of ITIL Process Evaluation (.JPG) shows the key information flows (see fig. 1).

ITIL 4 describes the process evaluation key activities in the general management practice of " Continual improvement ".

Sub-Processes

These are the ITIL Process Evaluation sub-processes and their process objectives:

Process Management Support

  • Process Objective: To support all parties involved in managing and improving processes, in particular the Process Owners. This process will also coordinate all modifications to processes and update the Process Architecture , thereby making sure that all processes cooperate in a seamless way.

Process Benchmarking

  • Process Objective: To evaluate processes in relation to comparable organizations, with the aim of identifying shortcomings and developing plans for improvement .

Process Maturity Assessment

  • Process Objective: To evaluate processes in relation to best practice, with the aim of identifying shortcomings and developing plans for improvement (see Process Evaluation Report ).

Process Audit

  • Process Objective: To perform process audits in order to certify compliance of the processes with certain standards or regulatory requirements.

Process Control and Review

  • Process Objective: To submit processes to regular reviews, and to identify process weaknesses which should be addressed by process improvement initiatives.

Definitions

The following ITIL terms and acronyms ( information objects ) are used in ITIL Process Evaluation to represent process outputs and inputs:

Change Request to Process Architecture

  • A request to change or extend the Process Architecture , usually issued from the Service Design process when the introduction or modification of a service is not possible within the constraints of the existing process framework.

KPI Target Value

  • The to-be value of a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) . It is the responsibility of the Process Owners to manage and optimize processes so that KPI targets are achieved.

Process Architecture

  • An overview of all processes and process interfaces, used as a tool to make sure that all processes within an organization cooperate in a seamless way. The Process Architecture is part the Enterprise Architecture .

Process Assessment Guideline

  • A guideline describing the four most-often used approaches to evaluate the underlying service management processes: Process Maturity Assessments , Benchmarks , Audits and Process Reviews .

Process Design

  • The description of a process including its inputs and outputs, activities, and responsibilities. Process Designs are under the control of Process Management.

Process Evaluation Program

  • The purpose of the Process Evaluation Program is to make sure all relevant processes and areas of the organization are subject to regular Process Maturity Assessments , Benchmarks , Audits and/ or Process Reviews , as appropriate.
  • Note: The concept of a "Process Evaluation Program" has been added in ITIL 2011.

Process Evaluation Report

  • The results from a Process Maturity Assessment , Benchmarking , Audit , or Process Review , including identified shortcomings and areas which must be addressed by improvement initiatives.

Process Metric (KPI)

  • Process Metrics ( Key Performance Indicators – KPIs ) define what is to be measured and reported to help manage a process.

Seven-Step Improvement Guideline

  • The Seven-Step Improvement approach ( 7-Step Improvement ) is presented in the ITIL books as the Seven-Step Improvement Process. Rather than a process it is in fact the description of a methodology which can be universally applied to identify shortcomings in services and processes and to implement improvements.

Suggested Process Improvement

  • Suggestion for improving Service Management processes, handed over to the Continual Service Improvement process. Suggestions for process improvements may originate from anywhere within the IT organization.
  • Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) Process Evaluation

Roles | Responsibilities

Process Architect - Process Owner

  • The Process Architect is responsible for maintaining the Process Architecture (part of the Enterprise Architecture ), coordinating all changes to processes and making sure that all processes cooperate in a seamless way.
  • This role often also supports all parties involved in managing and improving processes, in particular the Process Owners . Some organizations combine this role with the Enterprise Architect role.

Process Owner

  • A role responsible for ensuring that a process is fit for purpose. The Process Owner’s responsibilities include sponsorship, design, and continual improvement of the process and its metrics.
  • In larger organizations there might be separate Process Owner and Process Manager roles, where the Process Manager has responsibility for the operational management of a process.

[1] A: Accountable according to the RACI Model: Those who are ultimately accountable for the correct and thorough completion of the ITIL Process Evaluation process.

[2] R: Responsible according to the RACI Model: Those who do the work to achieve a task within Process Evaluation.

[3] possibly supported by an external auditor

[4] in cooperation

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A Guide to ITIL Change Types

Understand different types of change and their use cases

ITIL  is a type of IT Service Management (ITSM) framework that delivers real value to customers and business. Each stage of ITIL includes the relevant processes to help businesses manage their IT services.

Learn more about ITIL change types and how effective change management can help organize change requests and streamline your IT processes.

In this article:

What is ITIL change management?

What are the types of changes in ITIL?

Use cases for itil change management, benefits of itil change management, choosing the right it change management tool for your business, what is itil change management.

ITIL change management is part of the service transition stage of the ITSM lifecycle, which is responsible for any incident reports or admin requests at an IT service desk.

ITIL change management follows a process flow to evaluate, plan, and deploy change requests. The primary objective is to ensure that change execution does not interrupt ongoing operations, keeping the change as low risk as possible.

The process acts as something of a gatekeeper, authorizing every change record before it’s moved to the release management stage. It can also help businesses stay in control of all their change requests and monitor the development of their IT infrastructure alongside industry trends.

The five stages of ITIL change management process flow

ITIL change management process flow includes five stages:

Request for change (RFC)

Change assessment and planning

Change approvals

Change implementation

Post-implementation review

By following a strategic workflow, businesses and organizations can benefit from fewer service disruptions and IT incidents.

ITIL change types can be grouped into standard changes, normal changes and emergency changes. Changes can be varied – some may be routine changes and low risk admin reports, while others may need resolving as soon as possible. Some changes might also require approval from managers, stakeholders or the Change Advisory Board (CAB), which oversees and reviews overall change risk management.

Standard changes

Standard changes are periodical changes that follow a standard operating procedure using templates with pre-prepared information. A standard change is:

Pre-defined

Pre-approved.

Standard changes do not follow the conventional process flow. You’ll only require approval the first time. Then, you can complete any future changes without CAB approval, so long as the change has not been modified in any way.

Example: OS upgrades and patch deployment.

Normal changes

To resolve a normal change, you must follow the entire change process, including:

Risk assessment

Authorization.

Any changes that aren’t seen as standard or emergency should follow the process for a normal change. This includes:

Minor changes. Low impact. Low risk. Non-trivial changes that occur occasionally but must still receive CAB approval. May become a standard change in the future.

Major changes. High risk and high impact. May interrupt ongoing operations if not assessed correctly.

Normal changes may require both manager and CAB approval. It’s also important to document any relevant information about the normal change for future reference.

Example: Website changes or data center migration.

Emergency changes

Emergency changes are urgent disruptions that must be assessed, approved and resolved as soon as possible. They are:

High impact

Unexpected.

An emergency change can impact business operations and create costly downtime, requiring specific approval and authorization. It’s incredibly important for the Emergency Change Advisory Board (ECAB) to understand the risks, impact and manage approval.

The IT service management system must be prepared for emergency changes to deliver a consistent user experience.

Emergency changes also require a post-implementation review with mandatory documentation to understand potential risks that could occur in the future.

Example: Fixing a security breach or server outage.

By setting concrete standards for different change types and classifications, businesses and organizations can stay alert to issues and surprises. Emergency changes can present high risks to business operations, so it’s important to respond effectively.

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IT and DevOps teams use ITIL Change management effectively on a day to day basis to handle new change requests and plan for deployment. There are different possible use cases where ITIL Change management can be utilized.

Use case 1 - Business Continuity Management

Business Continuity Plan (BCP) and Disaster Recovery (DR) are vital to ensure seamless business operations. This is an ideal example of high impact and high risk major change that requires prudent change planning. The responsibilities of change management in BCP&DR include

Minimal or no interruption to the current ecosystem

Optimal resource utilization

Impact analysis to identify vulnerable Configuration Items (CIs)

Proper documentation of all relevant changes

Communication strategy to all stakeholders

Service monitoring including recovery time taken (RTO,RPO)

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ITIL V4 Change Management in 2021: Everything You Need to Know

Sep 20, 2019

Change. Love it or hate it—and let’s be honest, most of us hate it—it will always be a big part of working in IT.

IT service management ( ITSM ) requires solid change management capabilities. Change management helps align IT activities with business objectives. We can even say that change management is the key factor to transform your organization from a regular service provider to a business innovator. That’s why frameworks like the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) exist. ITIL’s goal is to align the services a business offers and the expectations of a client using these services.

If you’ve ever tried to get a change approved or even implemented, you’ll likely know about the struggles that go along with it. In order to smooth this process, let’s explore the best practices the ITIL framework proposes related to handling changes. This post will take you on a tour through change management, the different levels of changes, and how to communicate these changes accordingly. Finally, we’ll break down a case study where we apply change management to DevOps.

After reading this post, you should feel confident implementing new changes to your existing IT service infrastructure.

Let’s get started with a soft introduction into ITIL.

What is ITIL?

ITIL is a framework which provides a set of best practices related to IT service management and continual improvement of IT-enabled services. The framework has been around for the last 30 years and has continued to adapt to today’s standards. Now, ITIL version 4 uses all of its evolved ITSM practices to be more compatible with the lean, agile, and DevOps movements.

Let’s first explore the definition of a change according to ITIL v4 principles.

A “Change” in Layman Terms

So, what is a change? It’s simply moving from one state to the next. As far as ITIL is concerned, it means that we’re moving to a new state in a way that affects IT services or its components. In this context, a change is an approved event, and the person doing that approving is the same one that oversees the change management process. Later on, we’ll learn that this person is referred to as a change authority.

There are a few ways change can be initiated.

The first type of change comes in the form of a change proposal. This is a thorough, detailed description—one that includes a business case and a proposed schedule—of the change you want to make to a service. You’ll want to share the financial ramifications of the proposed change, too. Change proposals are bigger projects than our next form of change initiation.

The second way you might get a change rolling is to submit a RFC—a request for change. This one’s a bit more formal, but anyone can submit one, as long as the change you’re requesting isn’t an emergency. Often, a stakeholder or service user will submit a change request. In order to formalize this request, an organization should have a standardized change request form that people can fill out.

itil change management

What Is Change Management?

Change management plays an important role in the domain of service transition. It’s part of ITIL’s framework, and it offers best practices for service building, deploying, and transitioning.

Change management helps to minimize the risks for operational IT services. Plus, it makes sure an organization documents every change by identifying different levels of changes and specifying how to handle them. Some changes require minimal authorization while others require a detailed report about finances, benefits, and risks.

Let’s read more about the items that make up change management.

What Does Change Management Include?

It’s necessary to understand some of the most important elements that make up change management. In this section, we’ll discuss change authority, change types, and change communication.

Clarifying the Responsibilities of a Change Authority

First of all, let’s discuss the roles and responsibilities that come with change management. The next section will explain the different change types.

To understand these types, we need to know what change management roles exist and the responsibilities of those roles. The people who fill these roles can approve different levels of change requests.

1. Change Requester

The change requester is the person or entity that opened the initial change request. Note that the change requester can’t approve their own change request.

2. Change Advisory Board (CAB)

The CAB is made up of individuals that have knowledge on different domains related to a change. A particular change request may need a change advisory board that includes a marketing manager, financial officer, and technical lead to assess the impact of a particular service change. For example, the marketing manager may have input on how this change will affect their marketing strategy and learn what work is needed from their side to prepare for this change.

But the board doesn’t just have to be composed of internal folks. You might have stakeholders or consultants weighing in. In fact, you might even invite some of your more important customers—total outsiders to your company!—to be on your CAB.

Additionally, some companies prefer to establish an emergency change advisory board (ECAB) in case an emergency change arises. However, as you’ll read later, in the “Emergency Change” section, your pool of change reviewers should be flexible.

If an incident happens during the weekend, it might be hard to gather the ECAB. In that case, often only one manager or supervisor will approve the change to resolve the incident as quickly as possible.

3. Change Authority/Owner

The change authority is the one that oversees the processes behind change and all that entails. This person has the power to reject change requests that don’t contain sufficient information. The change authority also leads CAB meetings and gets change requests in front of the right people on the CAB.

So now that we understand who’s involved in change management, let’s talk about the different change types.

Exploring the Different Levels of Change

ITIL v4 defines different levels of severity for new changes:

itil change management

Let’s talk about each of these levels.

Standard Change

Some changes are risky, but a standard change isn’t. These types of changes are so routine that they don’t need further investigation. They’re simple and straightforward changes that everyone understands. A standard change is one that occurs frequently—so frequently that there’s documentation around it and it doesn’t need authorization.

However, when first creating a standard change, the CAB will assess the involved risks. It’s only after they perform this risk assessment and confirm that there’s sufficient documentation that they can decide whether to accept or reject this request to put a standard change in place.

Example: OS upgrade

Straightforward and frequent change.

Documentation needed.

No further authentication required.

Normal Change

Next, we have a normal change. A normal change is one that’s not standard but also isn’t an emergency. Maybe you want to make a big change to your website. That’s a bit riskier than a standard change.

As with standard change, you’ll need authorization by the CAB. But unlike the standard change, you’ll have to go through the entire change management process for each normal change. That can take time.

Example: Website change or performance improvement

Important change to service/IT infrastructure.

Full change management review.

Requires final authorization from CAB.

Major Change

We classify a change as a major one if that change means a lot of money is at stake (or if it’s otherwise quite risky).

To make a major change, you’d definitely want to be able to justify the risk. That means weighing the risks with the benefits, as well as laying out all the financial ramifications, in a detailed proposal. Both management and the CAB will be taking a hard look at that proposal.

Example: Migration from one data center to another

Management and CAB authorization.

Detailed report/proposal needed.

High-risk change.

Emergency Change

An emergency change means there’s an urgent situation and a change needs to be implemented as quickly as possible. An emergency change often resolves a major incident. However, due to the hasty nature of these resolutions, emergency changes have a higher risk of failure.

There is no standard emergency change process, so companies will make their own. The authorization of emergency changes will also be different for each organization and case. However, if you’ve ever been in an emergency, you already know how important it is that the authorization of the change is fast and simple. That’s why companies don’t have as rigorous an approval process for emergency changes.

In fact, an emergency change doesn’t always require the approval of management or the CAB. Anyone in an emergency will want to implement the change as quickly as possible. Therefore, this type of change can be authorized by management or even through peer review.

Let’s say an incident occurs at night or during the weekend. It’s not easy to get approval from the entire management staff or CAB. With limited staff availability, the pool of eligible approvers should be flexible. Only then can you be able to quickly resolve emergency changes.

According to ITIL v4, it’s even possible for an emergency change to get verbally approved. When this happens, you’ll always want to record the change after the incident has been resolved. It’s important to keep track of what changes have occurred and why they were resolved in a particular way.

Example: Fix for security breach or server outage

Resolves incident.

High risk of failure.

Urgent change.

Flexible pool of approvers.

Change Communication

We all know that communication is key. This statement is especially true when communicating changes across the organization. A change is never completed until it’s been communicated to all affected stakeholders.

It’s safe to say that communication is essential to enable any change initiative. Let’s see how we can effectively communicate changes.

How to Communicate a Change

Some organizations like to send out an email to all affected stakeholders, teaching them how the change impacts them. Often this email also tells them in what way they’ll have to do things differently. Many may argue that this form of tempered, intellectual, facts-based communication is an ideal way to transmit the message. However, a cold-seeming email may have the opposite effect, leading to more resistance.

Effective change communication focuses more on the emotional and personal aspects of the change.

Certainly, every change communicator experiences resistance once in a while. In truth, no email format exists to solve the problem of resistance. Some change communicators believe that spamming their colleagues with emails explaining the change multiple times will make them change their mind. In fact, we need a more personal approach that targets each individual emotionally. When we can convince an employee that this change will positively impact them, they’re less likely to resist.

Best Practices for Change Communication

Now that we’ve learned how to communicate a change, let’s list some of the best practices for change communication.

1. Don’t Use a One-Size-Fits-All Communication Strategy

It often happens a senior manager shares a change and expects that everyone will just understand and accept it. This is not always the case. But that’s not necessarily because the change is bad. It might just be because the change should be communicated in a different way.

The message should be tailored to your audience. If your change affects both the marketing and the development departments, it makes sense to write two different emails explaining the details applicable to them in particular. This way, you make sure you communicate the right information to the right people.

2. Express and Encourage Trust

Trust is essential for successful change communication. A change must be supported by management and the CAB in order to gain the trust of employees. If there are internal struggles, it will show. This will eventually lead to doubts among the employees about the upcoming change. Therefore, make sure to communicate a change transparently and honestly, and express trust in the good of the change.

3. Use a Variety of Communication Means

Here’s another strategy: try to diversify in your use of communication means.

For one thing, instead of bombarding your employees with emails, try to be a minimalist. One concise email is much more effective than 10 follow-up letters.

Some other means of communication include

Team meetings.

Small group sessions.

Video conference.

One-on-one meetings.

OK. So now that we know how to strongly communicate a change, let’s get practical. Let’s apply change management to the domain of DevOps.

Change Management and DevOps

ITIL remains a framework that defines best practices. However, some argue that ITIL is too much about processes. Let’s find out how change management can be applied to DevOps.

Change management helps to define a formal way of requesting changes. It also helps assess the risk of a change request. The DevOps team needs to know how a new change will impact the current IT services. For that, you need to employ agile change management .

For example, what if a report concludes that there’s a risk that a new change will impact the IT services currently running? The DevOps team will probably decide to first deploy this service to a test or separate environment to further assess the impact.

It’s worth mentioning that the change management process and tools may affect the efficiency of your DevOps team. It puts an extra workload on your DevOps team. After all, they have to learn about the whole change management process.

Opportunities

Change management requires that every change request comes with documentation about the possible outcomes, risks, and benefits. This helps the DevOps team keep track of all changes and formally document them.

Besides that, change management also defines how the DevOps team has to communicate changes. This is an opportunity for them, as it forces them to learn how to speak to all affected departments.

When there’s an emergency change within the DevOps team, only a select number of people have the required knowledge for assessing the risks involved. You can see why it can be hard to get an emergency change approved in a timely manner. Considering this, change management can be a threat to existing IT services.

But if you always have one member of the CAB on call, you can alleviate that risk.

Example Change Management for DevOps: Avoid Manual Changes

Especially for DevOps, automation is king. Therefore, we could come up with a new change request that restricts any employee from using SSH to the servers. This would mean that the DevOps team has to come up with ways to automate every aspect of their pipeline and daily tasks.

For example, let’s say your service turns out to have problems. So you try to consult the logs for this specific service. Instead of SSHing into the server, you force users to use a log aggregation tool that offers better functionality for searching and filtering logs.

Of course, it’s not always possible to follow this rule. For that reason, the change request should allow for an occasional SSH into the servers. But the DevOps team should think of ways to automate this exception.

In another example, a DevOps employee notices that their server is running out of memory. According to the new policy, they want to avoid manually allocating more storage space. He should use the APIs many cloud providers expose to first get notified when a server is using almost all of its available storage space. As a next step, the DevOps engineer should try to automatically allocate more storage space to this specific server using the cloud provider’s API.

See? It’s doable to align change management and DevOps.

Almost any problem can be automated. It’s all about following the new change request as strictly as possible. By doing so, the DevOps team will gradually save more time by automating most of its tasks.

How Is Change Management Used in Modern Organizations?

In a Forbes article , Paul Pellman, CEO of Kazoo, was quoted as saying, “The management of it shouldn’t be siloed in leadership. The biggest mistake I often see in change management is that company leaders often fail to involve managers in the process to embrace, promote and facilitate the changes that need to happen.”

To Pellman’s point, it’s a common misconception among leaders that collaboration is all about playing well with others. But in fact, change management is much more than just being nice. Change management is a creative process that involves your employees.

Therefore, your employees should provide feedback in brainstorming sessions or one-on-one meetings. This input should be used to design future change requests. These change requests should focus on reducing the workload for employees. Also, it should bring them more happiness!

Of course, some of the change requests should also be focused on increasing customer satisfaction or delivering improved services.

What to Remember About Change Management

If you decide to use ITIL change management practices, consider adopting a platform like Plutora that makes change management process more proactive and predictable, and remember the following key elements:

Focus on employee satisfaction and improved IT services.

Make sure that teams document every change request.

Have systems in place to assess the risks of changes and try to reduce them.

Communicate changes in a more personal and appealing way.

If you can keep that in mind, you’re in good shape to embrace change the right way.

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ITIL Change Management | ITIL Foundation | ITSM

In this tutorial, we will discuss ITIL Change Management Process . Here in this chapter, you will learn what is a Change? Types of Changes in ITIL (i.e. Change Models)? Detail about Standard, Normal, Emergency Change , and Definition, Objective, Scope, Activities, Roles, and Sub-Processes of Change Management - ITIL V3 Process.

What is ITIL Change Management Process?  

Change Management (CM) is one of the main processes under Service Transition Module of the ITIL best practice framework .

As defined in  ITIL V3 , Change Management process describes all of the approaches for making organizational changes. It guides an organization to optimize the use of resources, business process, budget allocations, or other modes of operation, by making significant changes to them.

ITIL Change Management Scope: 

ITIL Change Management Process is tightly bound with “ Service Asset and Configuration Management ” process. And It frequently interacts with Configuration Management Database (CMDB) , which is technically the fundamental component of this process.

Apart from that, it also coordinates with other service management processes like Incident Management  and  Problem Management  in case they need to implement changes to solve any critical issue.

Change Management process also works in parallel with  Release and Deployment Management  to keep track of changes made between two consequent release changes.

What is a Change? - Definition

Before making a deep dive into the ITIL Change Management Process, let us first know about Change.

According to ITIL v3, a Change is an event that results in a new status of one or more configuration items (CIs) and which has an impact on the current way of doing business. Hence, it is the means of addition, modification or removal of anything that could have an effect on IT services.

Moreover, ITIL tells us that every change should be a controlled change, means the change activities should be approved by company’s management group.

The scope of organizational change includes changes to all architectures, processes, tools, metrics, and documentation, as well as changes to IT services and other configuration items.

ITIL Change Management Types - Defining Change Models: 

ITIL divided “Change” into three distinct types, those three types of changes in ITIL are  (i) Standard Change , (ii) Normal Change , and (iii) Emergency Change . Sometimes these are also called Change Models .

ITIL Change Management Types - Change Models ITIL V3

(i) Standard Change:

This Standard Change type or Standard Change model is used for pre-authorized repetitive, low risk and well-tested changes.

As defined in ITIL V3, these are regular changes for which the support team doesn’t require to seek for explicit change approvals. For example, updating antivirus definition on regular basis, request for password reset.

(ii) Normal Change: 

Normal Change is the most generalized change model. Any change which falls into this change category must go through certain predefined steps before implementation.

As defined in ITIL V3, these are formal changes, with a defined schedule and timeline. These are generally major changes which require proper assessment, authorization, approval from Change Advisory Board (CAB) , and also to go through a review process after implementation.

Examples of Normal Changes are, adding a new feature to an application or Major patch update to servers.

This type of change is managed in a very formal way. We would discuss the actual steps under “ change activity section ”.

(iii) Emergency Change:

Emergency change model is used when a highly critical change is needed to be done within a very short period of time to restore any failed service or component. This type of change request is typically raised from Incident management or problem management process to restore/replace failed services or components.

Some examples of Emergency Changes are, Changing faulty component of the critical server, or rebuilding a crashed application module.

For this Emergency change model, ITIL mandates to call for an ECAB (Emergency CAB) meeting before doing the change and later formal written approvals are taken after initiating the change activity.

ITIL Change Management Objective: 

The primary objective of ITIL Change Management Process is to control every change throughout the Changes Management Lifecycle. The goal is to facilitate beneficial Changes to be incorporated, with minimum disruption to IT services.

Other objectives are to bring-out clarity about the result of change before it is implemented and to enable the economical use of resources involved in a change process.

This process is also responsible to identify and stop any unauthorized or unintended change activity.

Seven R’s (7R’s) of ITIL Change Management: 

According to ITIL Change Management Process, it is advised to involve and work in a change activity only after understanding the whole change scenario.

It is preferred to ensure that any person involved in the change process has the full information about the business requirement of the change.

To facilitate the same, the Seven R’s (7R’s) rule is created and recommended. The Seven R’s rule is as follows:

  • Who RAISED the change?
  • What is the REASON for the change?
  • What is the RETURN required from the change?
  • What are the RISKS involved in the change?
  • What RESOURCES are required to deliver the change?
  • Who is RESPONSIBLE to build, test & implement the change?
  • What is the RELATIONSHIP between this change & other changes?

ITIL Change Management Lifecycle Activities: 

There are quite a few activities that are grouped together and referred to as the  Change Management Lifecycle .

Managing a change is usually a very crucial job for business improvement, and that is only possible with maintaining some discipline when doing this process.

The ITIL Change Management Lifecycle activities start with the creation of an RFC (Request for Change that contains basic information & intent behind the change and ends with either a closure or rollback. The actual number of steps may vary depending upon the change type or model.

Below are the activities are done at the time of making a Normal Change and usually done in the sequence as listed:

  • Create an RFC (Request for Change).
  • Respond & record the RFC.
  • Review the RFC.
  • Assess and evaluate the Change Proposal .
  • Authorize the Change. 
  • Plan & Schedule the Change.
  • Coordinate the Change Implementation.
  • Review the Results of Change.
  • Close the Change as Complete or Roll-Back.

Note: All of the above change management lifecycle activities are complemented by sub-processes of Change Management , discussed later in this chapter.

The below diagram illustrates the ITIL Change Management Lifecycle Activities:

ITIL Change Management Lifecycle Activities

ITIL Change Management Sub-Process: 

According to ITIL V3, Change Management Process has Eleven Sub-Processes . Below are the objectives and short descriptions of those sub-processes, followed by a diagram describing the ITIL Change Management process flow:

1) Change Management Support:

Used to provide templates and guidance for the authorization of Changes. Also responsible for communicating information about ongoing changes to other IT Service Management processes.

2) RFC Logging and Review:

Used to filter out Requests for Change which do not contain all information required for assessment or which are deemed impractical.

3) Assessment of Change Proposals:

Responsible for assessing Change Proposals describing significant strategic Changes. The purpose of assessing Change Proposals is to identify possible risks & impacts before starting the design activities.

4) Assessment and Implementation of Emergency Changes:

Used especially to assess, authorize and implement an Emergency Change as quickly as possible. This sub-process is initiated only if the requirement is classified as “very urgent” by the business and not doing the change may attract huge business loss.

5) Change Assessment by the Change Manager:

The initial assessment is done by Change Manager to determine the significance of change. In case of Minor Changes, it may be immediately assessed and authorized by the Change Manager, while Significant Changes are passed on to the CAB for assessment.

6) Change Assessment by the CAB:

Responsible for assessing & authorizing Significant Changes to Infrastructure or Application. If required, higher levels of authority (e.g. IT Management) are involved in the authorization process.

7) Change Planning & Scheduling:

Responsible for authorizing detailed Change plan and Release plan before development starts. Also responsible for scheduling important dates of change management activities.

8) Change Deployment Authorization:

Responsible for ensuring that all required Change components have been developed, thoroughly tested, and to authorize the Change Deployment phase.

9) Change Implementation or Deployment:

This is the process which deals with the actual implementation of the approved changes. This process maintains coordination with both Design Team and Operation Team to provide a smooth implementation experience.

10) Minor Change Deployment: 

Only initiated to implement low-risk, well-understood Changes which do not require the involvement of Release Management . It helps to reduce the time & effort of deep investigation, which otherwise may consume a large amount of time.

11) Post Implementation Review and Change Closure:

Responsible for assessment of the success of the Change implementation and the achieved results. Also ensures that the complete history of activities is recorded for analysis, learning lessons, and future references. The closure report is then used to update the CMDB.

ITIL Change Management Process Flow

Important Terminologies and Definitions: 

Request for Change (RFC):

  • Request for Change (RFC) formerly also known as Change Request (CR), denotes a formal request for a Change to be incorporated.
  • An RFC specifies the key information about the proposed Change and must be submitted to Change Management for every non-standard Changes (For both Normal & Emergency Changes).

Change Proposal:

  • A Change Proposal describes a proposed Major Change, like the introduction of a new service or a significant change to an existing service.
  • The purpose of Change Proposal is to communicate a proposed major Change and describes the benefit, risk, and impact before the design activity begins.
  • Change proposals are generally outlined by  Service Portfolio Management & then transferred to Change Management process.

CAB Agenda Template:

  • The CAB Agenda Template lists the topics for discussion in a CAB meeting.

Change Evaluation Report:

  • In case of Major Changes, like the introduction of a new service or a significant change to an existing service, require a formal Change Evaluation before being authorized. The results of that formal assessment are documented in this Change Evaluation Report.

Change Management Policy:

  • The Change Management Policy specifies the organizational guidelines about the levels of authorization required to authorize different types of Changes and other rules for assessing Changes.
  • The goal of this policy is all about assessing & reducing the risks associated with a change.
  • Change Management Policy is an important input to the Change Evaluation Process.

Change Record:

  • The Change Record contains all the details of a Change, documenting the lifecycle of a single Change.
  • It is usually created on the basis of a preceding Request for Change (RFC).

Change Schedule:

  • A Document containing all approved or authorized Change Proposals and Changes and their planned implementation schedules.
  • A Change Schedule is sometimes called a Forward Schedule of Change (FSC).

Projected Service Outage (PSO):

  • A document that describes any expected deviations from the service availability agreed in SLAs.

RFC Template:

  • An RFC template needs to be used at the time of formally requesting a Change.
  • This RFC template includes details of the proposed Change, and may be recorded on paper or electronically.

ITIL Change Management Roles and Responsibilities: 

Change Manager:

  • This role is the Process Owner of ITIL Change Management process.
  • The Change Manager controls the lifecycle of all Changes. His primary responsibility is to facilitate beneficial Changes to be implemented, with minimum disruption to IT services.
  • In case of Major Changes, the Change Manager needs to seek authorization from the Change Advisory Board (CAB).
  • Other responsibilities of Change Manager include:- Chair the CAB & ECAB meetings, Change Coordination, Change Review,  Issue Change Schedule, Updating Change Log, and Publishing Management Reports etc.

Change Advisory Board (CAB):

  • A CAB is represented by a group of people who advises the Change Manager in the assessment, prioritization, and scheduling of Major Changes.
  • This board usually consists of selectively chosen representatives from all areas within the IT organization, the representatives from the business, and third parties such as suppliers.
  • Usually, the Change Manager has the responsibility to chair the CAB meetings.

Emergency Change Advisory Board (ECAB):

  • A subset of the Change Advisory Board (CAB) who makes decisions about high impact Emergency Changes.
  • Membership of the ECAB is usually dynamic in nature. Depending on the nature of the Emergency Change, the participants are chosen at the time of calling for a meeting.

We hope that you have enjoyed the above article describing ITIL Change Management Process. Be with us to explore free training on Leading Technologies and Certifications.

Leave us some comments if you have any question about Change, Types of Change in ITIL, Normal Change, Emergency Change, or about ITIL Change Management, we will be happy to help you.

If you like our articles please like our facebook and twitter page to receive notifications on recent and updated contents.

Suggested Reading:  

  • 10 Best ITIL Books to Pass ITIL Foundation Exam on Your First Attempt
  • List of All ITIL Roles and Responsibilities – Process Wise
  • ITSM vs ITIL: What’s the Difference?
  • ITIL Continual Service Improvement Process

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Ayan Brahmachary

I'm passionate about Information Technology & spreading my knowledge makes me happy. I Have MBA(IS), ITIL, PRINCE2, CCNA, CCNP, MCSA, MS Hyper-V Certifications, and Trained in PMP, CCIE. And also have 10+ Yrs of Work Experience. I wish you all the best in your career !!!!

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COMMENTS

  1. ITIL Change Evaluation

    Objective: ITIL Change Evaluation aims to assess major Changes, like the introduction of a new service or a substantial change to an existing service, before those Changes are allowed to proceed to the next phase in their lifecycle. Part of: Service Transition Process Owner: Change Manager Contents 1 Process Description 2 Sub-Processes

  2. ITIL Change Evaluation

    1) Change Evaluation prior to Planning: To assess & evaluate a proposed major Change before authorizing the Change planning phase. 2) Change Evaluation prior to Build: To assess & evaluate a proposed major Change before authorizing the Change build phase. 3) Change Evaluation prior to Deployment:

  3. ITIL Transition

    According to ITIL, the Change Evaluation process evaluates separate change phases prior to moving on to the next one. This process is illustrated in Figure 1, and it should ensure a smooth implementation of these extensive changes. Figure 1 - ITIL Change Evaluation Process

  4. Understanding the ITIL Change Definition: A Comprehensive Guide

    In essence, the ITIL Change Definition can be described as a set of processes and procedures that govern the planning, execution, and evaluation of any changes made within an IT environment. This includes changes to hardware, software, networks, configurations, and even organizational structures.

  5. Change Evaluation: The Seven R's Revisited

    ITIL Change Evaluation: The Seven R's Revisited April 29th, 2015 - 712 views Greg Sanker 6 min read The 2011 version of ITIL introduced the lesser known change evaluation process. It's a great addition, and I haven't seen a lot written about it. The first thing to know is not every change requires a formal change evaluation.

  6. ITIL Change Management

    ITIL sets another process related to changes: the Change Evaluation process (you can learn more about this process in the following article: ITIL - Change Evaluation Process ). According to the above-mentioned parameters, there are a few categories of changes: Minor - low level of risk and costs Significant - moderate level of risk and costs

  7. ITIL service transition: principles, benefits, and processes

    The key principles of service transition encourage teams to: Manage and predict potential course corrections. Repurpose existing services for efficiency. Maintain important services during the transition. Transfer critical knowledge for faster, more accurate decision-making. Define roles and responsibilities for timely, knowledgeable responses.

  8. Organizational change management: ITIL 4 Practice Guide

    This document provides practical guidance for the organizational change management (OCM) practice. 1. About this document. It is split into five main sections, covering: general information about the practice. the practice's processes and activities and their roles in the service value chain. the organizations and people involved in the practice.

  9. ITIL Change Management: Implementation Basics

    Change Management is a " process " in the Service Transition stage. The Change Management process In ITIL, " stages " are broken up into " processes ." The purpose of Change Management is to organize the workflow of introducing new IT services, which might be alterations to, or the replacement of, existing services.

  10. Change Management

    Change Management seeks to minimize the risk associated with Changes, where ITIL defines a Change as "the addition, modification of removal of anything that could have an effect on IT services". This includes Changes to the IT infrastructure, processes, documents, supplier interfaces, etc.

  11. PDF ITIL Change Evaluation

    Change. Release & Deployment. Evaluation prior to Deployment Management +. +. Service Validation & Testing. +. Service Asset & Configuration Management. +. Officially licensed ITIL® process templates as a basis for your ITIL® or ISO 20000 initiative: complete.

  12. Change Evaluation Report

    The Comprehensive Change Evaluation Report is a tool that allows organizations to thoroughly analyze the impact of a significant transformation within their structure.Organizational transformations involve a wide range of changes, such as mergers, acquisitions, downsizing, or implementing new technologies. These changes often affect various aspects of the organization, including employee ...

  13. ITIL Change Management: Definition, benefits and types

    What is ITIL Change Management? ITIL Change Management is a crucial discipline within the IT Service Management (ITSM) framework known as Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL).

  14. What's Changed with Change in ITIL 4?

    1. The Benefits of changing your name. Until industry discussion provoked a reconsideration, the change enablement technique was referred to as change control. The decision to abandon the term change management reflects the extent of ITIL scope having been expanded with the introduction of ITIL 4. ITIL 4 acknowledges the application of service ...

  15. What Is ITIL? A Beginner's Guide to the ITIL Process

    The Seven Service Transition Processes; Change management: The primary goal of change management is to minimize IT service disruptions resulting from change. Evaluation: The evaluation process requires the assessment of new services or significant changes to existing services. Transition planning and support: The transition planning and support process is used to coordinate and budget ...

  16. ITIL Change Management Process: Overview, Benefits, Limitations (2023

    ITIL change management offers a set of best practices for delivering incident-free IT services during change projects. The Whatfix Blog | Drive Digital Adoption. The Whatfix Blog | Drive Digital Adoption. CIO. CIO . CIO Blog. Explore all new CEOS and IT-related main on our enterprise digitalization blog hub.

  17. Change Evaluation

    The purpose of change evaluation is to provide a uniform and structured means of determining the performance of a change relating to the likely impact on the business, on any existing or proposed services, the current and future IT infrastructure.

  18. ITIL Change Request

    The initial assessment and evaluation of the change involves reviewing the change request document and assessing the proposed change to determine whether it is feasible, appropriate, and aligned with the overall IT strategy and organizational goals.

  19. Process Evaluation

    The following ITIL terms and acronyms (information objects) are used in ITIL Process Evaluation to represent process outputs and inputs:. Change Request to Process Architecture. A request to change or extend the Process Architecture, usually issued from the Service Design process when the introduction or modification of a service is not possible within the constraints of the existing process ...

  20. ITIL Change Types: Standard vs Normal vs Emergency

    ITIL change management is part of the service transition stage of the ITSM lifecycle, which is responsible for any incident reports or admin requests at an IT service desk. ITIL change management follows a process flow to evaluate, plan, and deploy change requests. The primary objective is to ensure that change execution does not interrupt ...

  21. ITIL Change Management Process: Overview, Benefits ...

    Define the Change Management Process Flow. ... Change Evaluation & Planning. In the second step, change leaders conduct an in-depth assessment of change to minimize the risk and impact. They determine the change type and priority, work on scheduling, roll-out, and back-out plan in case of any setbacks. ... ITIL change management helps create a ...

  22. Continuous Deployment: How It Fits in Your Delivery

    Let's first explore the definition of a change according to ITIL v4 principles. A "Change" in Layman Terms. So, what is a change? It's simply moving from one state to the next. As far as ITIL is concerned, it means that we're moving to a new state in a way that affects IT services or its components. In this context, a change is an ...

  23. ITIL Change Management

    Change Management (CM) is one of the main processes under Service Transition Module of the ITIL best practice framework. As defined in ITIL V3, Change Management process describes all of the approaches for making organizational changes. It guides an organization to optimize the use of resources, business process, budget allocations, or other ...

  24. What records are exempted from FERPA?

    Records which are kept in the sole possession of the maker of the records, are used only as a personal memory aid, and are not accessible or revealed to any other person except a temporary substitute for the maker of the records.