Change Management Process
Illinois Tech's Change Management Process, managed by the Office of Technology Services (OTS) assesses any requested technology change that impacts any university system, application, or service that is currently in production or going into production.
INSTRUCTIONS
Detailed instructions for entering and managing a change request can be found here.
Definitions
A Defined Change at Illinois Tech is any change to a system, application or service that is in production or going into production.
Change Control (sometimes referred to as “Change Management”) is the management process for requests to review, approve, carry out, and control changes to technology systems.
The Change Control Board (CCB) meeting occurs every Wednesday at 2:00 p.m. in OTS's 8th floor conference room, Room 8F7-1. Attendance is mandatory for staff who are requesting a change, so they can explain why it is necessary and what it will mean for the university community. If staff cannot attend, he/she should send a delegate to the meeting who is familiar with the requested change.
General maintenance, hardware and software upgrades, and enhancements are vital to keeping the university operation running smoothly and reducing security risks. Managing the changes is critical to meeting the Illinois Tech community's expectations and reducing service-level impacts. Actively prioritizing change requests, assessing risks to the production environment, scheduling, and communicating with the university community, ultimately reduces errors and improves customer relationships.
A Change Request (CR) is a procedure for an addition, modification, or removal of approved, supported, or base-line hardware, network, software, applications, environments, systems, desktop builds, or its associated documentation. [ITIL 00]
The Process Control Board (PCB) is a meeting that occurs every Tuesday at 2:00 p.m. as part of the OTS Managers’ meeting.
Change Types
Common Changes (formerly called "Standard Changes") are preapproved changes that are considered relatively low risk, are performed frequently, and follow a documented, Change-Management-approved process. Examples include, e.g., a scheduled reboot of a wireless access point or applying system patches.
These changes must be submitted before 5:00 p.m. on the Monday in the week of the scheduled Maintenance Window. Once the Change Control Board (CCB) has approved the Standard Change, it can be carried out in production as needed (per the defined process). Common Changes, even after approval, are still under the jurisdiction of Change Management. If a Common Change triggers an issue, Change Management can bring the Standard Change back for review and request modifications, as needed. High-impact changes that have previously been approved will need to be discussed and assessed during the weekly Process Control Board (PCB) meeting on Tuesdays.
Normal Changes are changes that are performed less frequently and may or may not have a documented process. These changes are raised as "Requests for Change" (RFC), which are first reviewed by the PCB at least 10 days in advance of implementation, are ultimately approved or rejected by the Change Control Board (CCB). These are often nontrivial changes to services, processes, or infrastructure.
Normal Changes must be clearly documented and approved at least 10 days in advance of the change implementation during the Tuesday PCB meetings.
Emergency Changes are the highest priority changes and need to be evaluated, assessed, and either rejected or approved within a short time span. Simply defining a change as an emergency does not automatically dictate that the change should be implemented.
Emergency changes must be approved by Illinois Tech's Chief Information Officer (CIO) or an OTS Associate CIO. The PCB will serve as the Emergency Change Advisory Board (ECAB) and assess the change, providing advice to the staff member assigned to approve or reject Emergency Changes.