Goal
Ensuring effective change management within the EGI’s production IT environment is extremely important in ensuring high-quality delivery of IT services.
The purpose of the IT Change Management Policy is to manage changes to CIs in the Internal CMDB in a planned and predictable manner in order to assign resources, assess risk and minimize any potential negative impact to services.
Scope
This policy applies specifically to the IMS owner and IMS Manager, the Quality and Risk Manager, all Process owners, Process managers, Service owners, Service Suppliers and all EGI staff involved in a change affecting EGI branded services in the service catalogue of EGI Foundation. Changes to CIs in the Internal CMDB are under scope of Change Management. Of particular importance are changes which have the potential to directly affect other services under the scope of CHM. Other EGI federated services are covered within CHM of the respective SMS of the service supplier.
Major changes to services that affect the EGI Service Portfolios are those having a high-risk (see procedure CHM1) to impact the business outcome of the EGI Federation and they should be within the scope of Service Portfolio Management SPM. These changes should be tracked via Service Design and Transition Package documents within the SPM process and are subject to approved by the Services and Solutions Board (SSB). Examples of such changes include:
- introducing a new service
- changing the phase of a service
- retiring a service
If such changes are brought directly to the attention of the CAB (i.e. not from SPM), then the CAB will request that they require additional approval by SPM.
Policy
All changes (including urgent changes) to CIs in the Internal CMDB must follow a standard process to ensure appropriate planning, resourcing and execution.
Normal change: Change is created by the Change Requester (usually the service supplier) and is approved by the Change Owner (a member of the CAB, normally the service owner).
Standard change: Recurrent changes may be classified as 'standard' or pre-approved changes and do not need to be explicitly approved by the CAB on subsequent occasions. A Standard change is created by the Change Requester and approved by the Change Owner. The Change Requester should never be the same person as the Change Owner.
Emergency change: In exception to the above, Emergency changes may be applied with only assessment and approval by the Change Owner and without prior assessment and approval from the CAB. However, these Emergency changes shall still be recorded and reviewed. Emergency changes may be requested and applied by the supplier or exceptionally by EGI Foundation staff.
Change Advisory Board: The Change Advisory Board (CAB) along with the Change Management Process Manager are the stewards of this process. Changes to CIs in the Internal CMDB must be presented to the CAB for assessment and approval in order to coordinate timelines, avoid conflict and maintain a complete and controlled view of changes at EGI.