Every day, new technologies become a part of the world and older ones turn obsolete. While this does not impact the nature of solutions offered by businesses, it does affect the delivery of such solutions. If the businesses do not switch to new technologies, they would be drowned out by competition, or become irrelevant to their customers. That’s why IT introduces changes to bridge the gap between business demands and their solutions.
If you’re wondering what role ITIL plays here, or more specifically, what is Change Enablement (change management, not to be confused with organizational change management) in ITIL, the simple answer is that ITIL simplifies the process for IT professionals by putting forward the best strategies for managing the changes. These strategies enable a business to stay in the competition without negatively impacting the existing customers.
What is ITIL Change Management?
Every business wants to stay on top of the competitive world but most of them ask, So, for this, it is imperative to understand what is change management in ITIL.
According to ITIL, change management is the modification of the company’s IT infrastructure that can lead to a direct or indirect effect on its operations without increasing the associated risk. The modification can be an addition, subtraction, or a switch in the strategy to improve the results.
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What Are the Objectives?
The primary objectives of change management in ITIL are –
- Minimum risk and impact
- Current working state maintenance
- Communication and approval management
- Effective results with resource optimization
- Minimum incidents caused due to the change
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Scenarios Where ITIL Change is Used
Once the company has understood what is change management in ITIL, it is time to understand in which scenarios it is explicitly used –
- A new data centre is implemented
- A bug fix is deployed to the production environment
- Windows are patched
- An ERP service provider is replaced
- OS is upgrade
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ITIL Change Management Objectives
Once proper learning is received, many organisations wonder what is change management in the ITIL process? But before understanding the process, it is important to know the objective behind it.
Allow the organisation to take control of the continuous changes
Change management increases the organisation’s control over the continuous IT changes and helps them in the implementation without increasing the risk. If a standard change management process is followed, it is assured that every aspect, including risk assessment, planning, and implementation tracking can be managed.
Better implementation of ITIL changes
When the organisation keeps a proper track of the change process, it can work towards achieving all the change requests. This also helps in the identification and restriction of unauthorised changes. Here is the process an organisation can follow –
- A user submits the change request through the service desk tool
- The organisation collects the required information about the change request and decides whether it needs to be implemented or not
- A robust approval mechanism is created which ensures that the change request has all the necessary permissions before the implementation
Continuous Improvement for the future
What is change management in ITIL? It is not a one-time process, but rather an IT strategy that needs continuous attention and improvement.
Change Management Process Flow
What is Change Management Process in ITIL?
Just like any other strategy carried out in an organisation, ITIL enablement (change management) is also implemented through a proper process. This helps in step-by-step analyses and spontaneous changes if required.
Submission
The first step involves the collection of change ticket information, including its priority and type.
Planning
This is the step where the change happens. Before the implementation of any strategy in an organisation, it is properly planned for effective results. Similarly, all the change requests are planned and implemented after the collection of necessary approvals.
Approval
Before a planned change is implemented, it requires approval from the company’s CAB (Change Advisory Board), ECAB (Emergency Change Advisory Board), and other authorities that have a stake in the requested change or the organisational infrastructure affected by it.
Implementation
The next step is to implement the change. This is where the plan comes into action and an organisation has to keep track of the implementation and manage it. The task can be –
- Delegated to different technicians through separate tasks
- Use projects to manage large-scale changes, such as moving the IT infrastructure to the cloud
Review
After change enablement and implementation, it has to be scrutinised to ensure that there are no deviations from the plan and all the current issues are resolved before the change is rolled out.
Closure
As the name suggests, this step is where the completed change is categorised into a success, failure, or incomplete. It helps in careful and accurate analysis for the future.
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Change Management Benefits
The changes carried out in the IT infrastructure benefit the organisation and end-users in different ways –
Organisation:
- Effective change management minimises collisions between different stakeholders
- Allows roll out of upgraded solutions without affecting the current operations
- Minimum change failures
- Precise classification of all the changes
End Users:
- Improved communication regarding the unavailability or downtown of services because of the scheduled changes
- Minimum disruptions that are generally caused due to unorganised changes
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Types of Changes in ITIL
IT changes are categorized into different types for better understanding and implementation –
These changes are carried out in the IT infrastructure where the risks and implementation process are clearly stated. They are managed in accordance with the IT organisation’s change policies. Standard changes are easy to implement and prioritise and do not need approval from the risk’s perspective.
These changes go through the proper process before approval and come under the high-risk category. They generally seek the advisory board’s approval before implementation.
These changes have to be rolled out due to unforeseen threat or error that has to be addressed immediately. They include infrastructural flaws or security threats to the company.
Change Management Roles and Responsibilities
A single individual cannot handle the change management and that’s why it is important to delegate the responsibility to the team members. The team of change management includes –
- Initiator: This individual identifies the requirement for a change and should always be someone who works with the support service tools.
- Coordinator: A coordinator assesses the change requests originated from various management services, prioritises them as required, determines the associated impact and risk, prepares the implementation plan, and monitors the changes.
- Manager: A manager is commonly found in mid-level and large companies. This person manages the procedures, receives the requests, evaluates the risks, and maintains a record of the result of the changes.
- Advisory Board: The changes and evaluation requests are authorised by this team. It usually comes into action if the manager thinks the risk involved is high. The board analyzes the risks and decides whether to proceed with the change request or not.
- Approver: The person decides whether a change is approved or rejected.
- Implementation Team: These specialists implement the change.
Change Management Best Practices
The top 5 practices to follow in change management are –
Identification
Every change is unique and demands a different level of priority. The best method to manage a change is through its identification.
Unique Process
Each change has unique processing requirements. Following the same plan for all the changes would lead to incompletion and delays.
Roles and Responsibilities
Decentralisation is the key to handling change implementation most effectively. Define the roles and activities for every individual on the team.
Clear Risk Insight
Every change has risks but the intensity differs. It is important to analyse the associated risk with every change to get a clear picture and plan of action.
Contingency Plan
It is always crucial to have a backup plan in place. It stops the company from having to deal with irreversible IT infrastructure damage.
Integration with Other ITIL Modules
| Change Management | Release Management |
| GateKeeper - Protects the production environment while assessing the release plan | Doer - Builds, tests and deploys changes as a whole or in batch |
| Pre and post deployment activities | Deployment activities |
| Change schedule/ Forward schedule change, FSC | Long-term release windows |
| Not all changes result in a release | All releases involve one or many changes |
| Quality control point | Packaging of approved changes |
| Authorization process | Implementation process |
| Strategic level | Operational level |
| Post implementation review, PIR | Version control |
Implementation Checklist
While working with the ITIL modules, there are some points an organisation should keep in mind –
- Change process for discussion with internal teams
- Change workflows for automating change processes
- Release team members are in the CAB approval
- Roles and responsibilities to every CAB member
- Change templates to pre-fill standard changes
- Define success factors and KPIs for Change Management
- Continuous review for improvement
Enabling Change – The ITIL Way
Once an organisation gets a clear understanding of what is change management in ITIL, what this process is, its benefits, objectives, and a handy checklist to keep note of how to go about enabling change; it becomes easier to implement the process and also scale it up where needed. Another important aspect to remember is that the change management process must be documented. Once the change management process is documented, it can be closed out.
