Change Management
[updated: September 11, 2020]
Process Owner: James Duncan
ServiceNow Change Management Overview
Overview
Change Management is the process responsible for facilitating the implementation of changes that could have an impact on an IT service. The goal is to enable beneficial changes to be made with minimum disruption to business operations, ensuring that the best possible levels of service quality and availability are maintained.
User Impact
Of all of the new processes we are adopting and implementing, Change Management is the one that we are most familiar with, having formalized our Change Management processes in 2014. Beyond the new tool we will be using to facilitate Change Management, there are no major changes for users. There will still be categorizations for standard, normal and emergency changes, and normal and emergency changes will still need to be reviewed by the CAB for approval. Pre- and post-implementation reviews will also still be in play.
The most significant change to the Change Management process within ServiceNow is that it is tightly integrated with Incident and Problem Management, giving us the ability to generate change requests from specific incidents or problems, as well as creating standalone change requests as we have done traditionally.
You'll also see the introduction of Change Tasks, tasks that can be assigned to an individual or another team for work activates related to the overall change. (e.g. a post implementation testing task)
Timelines & Activities
Change Management went live on August 18
The first phase of Change Management will focus on moving the existing defined process into the ServiceNow platform, providing a new user experience combined with a few improvements to the process. Overall, this phase will enable IT/CAB users and managers to:
- Understand how Change Management interacts with Incident Management, Problem Management and Configuration Management
- Initiate/create new standard, normal and emergency change requests
- Evaluate, assess and approve changes
- Create pre-defined templates for standard changes schedule, plan, and manage CAB meetings via CAB Workbench
- Measure the effectiveness of the process through dashboards and reporting
Past Activities
August 2020
- Change Management went live on August 18
- User training for IT employees and CAB members was held August 5, 6, and 11.
July 2020
- UAT completed (July 6-10)
June 2020
- Change Management Process Guide completed
May 2020
- Completed QA testing
April 2020
- A demo of the Change Management component was presented to the champions group [Apr. 28]
- Initial sprint completed [Apr. 10]
February 2020
Change Management User Story Summary
Below is a summary of our desired outcomes for our initial Change Management sprint. You can view the detailed user story here.
- Ability to create a new Change record from:
- Change application
- Incident application
- Problem application
- Request for Change Templates:
- Standard
- Normal
- Emergency
- After completing the Risk Assessment form, the Risk field should be automatically calculated based on the values selected in the risk assessment form
- A "Reschedule" button should be available on form header when a Normal Change is in the following states: Authorize, Scheduled.
- Work notes field should be mandatory when "Reschedule" button is clicked
- When the "Reschedule" button is used, the change will move back to "Authorize" and "Assess" if done during scheduled states
- Add the "Service" field to all change types so that users can easily identify services affected by the change
- Systematically assign Change Requests to the correct Technical Approver (based on Service)
- Only Change Managers to have the ability to put a change request on hold
- Mandate the entry of a closure code prior to closing a Change Request
- Include Communication Plan with Change Requests so that all information required for communicating a Change Request has been captured
- Configure conflict detection to ensure that changes can be scheduled at the least risky time
- Allow change requesters to propose new change templates so that these can be used by other requesters who are submitting similar changes
- Ability to review, approve or reject a Change Request by email
- Provide reports/metrics to measure efficiency and effectiveness of the Change Management process and its operation
- Notify delegates when they need to present a Change Request at CAB
- Ensure that invitations to CAB meetings are sent to relevant stakeholders
Oct. 2019
[Oct. 2019] Representatives from SuMO and ServiceNow were on-site demonstrating the out-of-the-box capabilities of each ServiceNow component to key stakeholders across Sheridan. As a prerequisite to these demos, the process owners for each component were asked to create and submit their user stories, outlining the:
- current state of operations
- challenges faced
- desired outcomes for implementation
Discussions regarding best-practices, and how ServiceNow can be best used to align to Sheridan's practices were integral parts of these workshops.
Workshop Participants: Brian Aubert, Arnold Calizo, Brian Smith (CTL), Wes Mathieu, Martin de Bernardo (FAAD), Kevin Bunt (Communications, Public Affairs & Marketing), Ian Colquhoun
