Change Management &Release Management

The change management process helps you to co-ordinate changes with minimal disruptions and accepted risk.

Most small businesses feel that Change Management is too controlling and that it is not possible to implement change quickly when you have a long-drawn process. Change Management will not be complicated unless you plan to complicate it. It is about having a simple plan and organizing yourself so that you don’t have surprise downtime.

In my opinion every organization needs change management. It helps IT Managers and IT staff to keep executives and stake holders informed when important change happen. When everyone from executives to IT staff is involved from decision-making to implementation it leaves no space for unwanted surprises.

Why did we adopt change management?

Our recruitment process for a fresher includes two parts: aptitude tests and personal interviews. Users have to log on to our testing platform, Challenge, which runs on a Windows server. Just like another day and another test, our HR team seated all our candidates, in preparation for the test.

The server was down; so our testing system was down. And…I tell you…it was really embarrassing.

When we checked, we found that our helpdesk staff had applied the latest security patch in the system and it failed to start. It turned out that it was not completely their fault as they had a policy to ensure that the latest security patch was applied on all servers.

It was a simple communication gap, but a big loss of face.

Lesson:

We did not have a method to communicate to the HR department about the system update. If informed, they could have scheduled the test later and if it was an important test, the upgrade could have done later that night.

Result: We got change management in place.

Implement a change management system without complication, with freedom you always love.

Here’s a simple and effective change management process that maps a common sense plan to ITIL.

Common Sense Plan

Formulate a well-defined Plan

• Define your proposed change

• How complex is the change: major/minor/regular

• How and when are you planning to roll out this change?

• Will your business be affected when you are implementing this change?

• If your change plans fail, will you restore the last-known good service?

• Make a checklist of the things you are assuming to be available.

Identify and obtain approval from stake holders who might be affected by the change

Prioritize and schedule the change

Test the change in a sandbox and implement it

How did the change go? Catch all the glitches.

Improve your plan next time.

ITIL Plan

Request for Change

Change Plan should contain

• Rollout Plan

• Back out Plan

• Assess Impact on Business

• Dependency Checklist

Change Advisory Board

Forward Schedule of Changes

Release Management

Post Implementation Review

For Large businesses looking at controlled Change Management with projects, A simple workflow based on these questions will help you to design an effective change management process.

變更管理

變更管理流程可以幫助您以最小的服務中斷和可接受的風險去協調變化。 大多數小企業認為變更管理不易控制，它是無法實作迅速改變，尤其是對于一個繁瑣的流程。變革管理不會很複雜，除非你計劃的複雜。它有一個簡單的計劃群組織你去做，這樣你就不會對當機時間感到吃驚。我認為每個組織都需要變更管理，它可以幫助IT經理和員工在發生重要的變化時和公司決策層管理者保持溝通，不會帶給他們超出預期的義務。

為什麼我們采取變更管理？ 我們對新人的招聘過程包括兩部分：能力測驗、個人面試。使用者可以登入到我們在Windows伺服器上登入測試平台進行測試，跟每天的測驗一樣，我們的人力資源團隊然後對候選人做測試的評估。伺服器導緻當機會我們的測試系統也會當機，情況變得很糟糕。當我們檢查時，發現HELPDESK人員已在系統中應用了最新的安全更新檔，而未能生效。結果這不是他們的錯誤導緻，隻是由于要求他們去確定最新的安全修補程式适用于所有伺服器，其實這僅是溝通上問題，而且會意味着重大的損失。

教訓：我們沒有一個辦法和人力資源部溝通有關系統更新的事，在對情況了解的基礎上，如果它是一個重要測試他們可以安排計劃稍後去測試，這個更新過程可以安排在晚上去做。實際上我們應用到了變更管理。實作變更管理系統，可以按照實際情況去做。這裡是一個簡單而有效的變更管理過程，普通的判斷計劃跟ITIL對比。

普通的判斷計劃：制定一個明确的計劃

•定義對建議做出的改變

•變化的複雜程度：主要/次要/标準

•計劃如何去做和何時進行這種變化？

•當進行變更時，業務會受到什麼影響？

•如果變更失敗，如何恢複上次正常狀态？

•制定檢查項目去確定能夠改變。

識别和找到誰是影響到變更的關鍵人

優先級和進度的變化

在沙盤中測試的變化和結果

怎麼去改變？要抓住細節。

下次改進你的計劃。

ITIL的計劃

請求變更

改革計劃應該包含：

•復原計劃

•取消計劃

•評估對業務的影響

•附上清單

變更的公布：下一步變更計劃、釋出管理、對過程進行審查。

對于大型企業的變革管理與控制項目，一個基于這些問題的簡單工作流将幫助你設計一個有效的變更管理過程。

The goal of Release Management is to plan, educate users and implement changes smoothly.

Release Management works closely with Change Management. Change Management is responsible for planning and Release Management for execution/implementation.

Let’s take an example from our daily lives. Whenever there is an important sewage pipe repair on a busy road,traffic cannot be stopped immediately. City officials inform commuters through news paper ads and local TV news that the road will be closed on a particular day and alternative routes are given. Commuters are able to plan things in advance so that there is no disappointment and changes are done smoothly.

That’s Release Management in action.

From the perspective of IT, Release Management helps you smoothly roll out changes to your IT without any disruptions.

• A Release plan with information about what to deploy, how to deploy and specifications in which it will work

• The Build/change to the deployed is thoroughly tested in a sandbox condition similar to the live condition

• The baseline value configuration value before the change is recorded.

• Release and distribution as planned

• Verify and test, if the changes requested are met.

釋出管理

釋出管理的目标是組織，引導使用者和讓變更平穩進行。

釋出管理和變更管理很密切，變更管理負責規劃，釋出管理負責執行和實施。

讓我們舉個現實生活中的例子：每當有在繁忙的道路維修重要的排污管道的狀況，交通車輛不能直接通過時，市府官員通過報紙和當地電視新聞給乘客替代的解決方案，上下班的乘客可以提前安排出行，這樣減少對交通的抱怨，使得維修可以順利進行，這就是在釋出管理的應用。

從IT的角度來看，釋出管理可以幫助我們順利實行變更，而不會導緻麻煩。

•釋出計劃要通知部署什麼，如何部署和規格。

•建構/部署的變化是徹底在沙箱中的生活條件相似的條件測試

•配置基準值前值的記錄變化。

•按計劃釋出和配置設定。

•驗證和測試可能發生的變更。