Policy Series - 4.: Change Management Policy

INTRODUCTION:

This policy document is aligned to ISO/IEC 20000 and ITIL V3 best practices.

As per this policy Change is defined as addition, modification or removal of any Configuration Item (CI) or its attributes.

SCOPE:

This policy is applicable to the entire change management life cycle as described in Change Management process document. Thus, the scope encompasses:

•        Business/IT services & CIs

•        Documents (Process, policy, contracts, manuals, SOPs, etc.)

•        Other CIs

This policy is applicable to all permanent, temporary and contract staff.

POLICY:

• A standard Change Management process will be defined and adopted by all business units/functions

• Emergency Change Management sub-process will be defined and followed to address major changes

• Staff should be trained to ensure that a common understanding on change and emergency change management prevails across the organization

• Roles and responsibilities shall be defined and communicated for effective Change Management

• Change Manager will be the single focal point for coordinating all changes

• Change requests should be classified, recorded, validated, accepted and prioritized

• All changes should be recorded in the change management tool

• Change Manager will allocate a priority for every RFC based on the impact and urgency; This priority rating should be used to decide which changes should be discussed and assessed first, either by Change Management or by the Change Advisory Board (CAB)

• Testing should be successfully completed before change is authorized/approved for implementation by Change Manager; Emergency Changes require Emergency Change Advisory Board approval for this exception but needs as much testing as possible before implementation

• All Changes to the production environment should be made within agreed Change windows;  Any exceptions will be agreed and communicated via a Projected Service Outage (PSO)

• All changes will be assessed for performance, risk and resources needed to implement the change

• Back out or roll back plan is mandatory for all changes including emergency changes

• Forward Schedule of Change (FSC) should be communicated to the users; Change Manager should inform Service Desk for effective communication of FSC

• Post Implementation Review is mandatory for all changes; Standard changes is an exception to this

• Any addition of service to the standard change list should be approved by CAB 

• Any unauthorized change should be considered violation of this policy

• Progress of all changes should be monitored by Change Manager till closure of RFC

• Change Management performance shall be reported and reviewed periodically

• Continual Service Improvement (CSI) initiatives should be taken up by Change Management 

ACCOUNTABILITY & RESPONSIBILITY TOWARDS POLICY ADHERENCE:

• Team Leads and delivery heads are responsible to ensure that their staffs are adequately trained to support this policy

• Change Manager(s) and Quality Leads are responsible to drive adherence to the policy and process

• Accountability to adherence to policy and process lies with individual staff

• Change Management process document

• Release & Deployment Management policy

• Request Fulfillment policy

BREACH:

Non-adherence to this policy will lead to disciplinary actions as per the organization's disciplinary policy and may even lead to termination of employment.

REFERENCES:

Following documents should be referred to along with this policy document:

Policy Series - 3.: Request Fulfillment Policy

INTRODUCTION:

This policy document is aligned to ISO/IEC 20000 and ITIL V3 best practices.

As per this policy Service Request is defined as end user requests that an IT organization is required to fulfill.

SCOPE:

This policy is applicable to the entire Request Fulfillment life cycle as described in Request Fulfillment process document. The scope encompasses entire ICT infrastructure of the organization. 

This policy is applicable to all permanent, temporary and contract staff.

POLICY:

• A standard Request Fulfillment process will be defined and adopted by the entire organization
• Staff should be trained to ensure that a common understanding on service request and request fulfillment prevails across the entire organization
• Roles and responsibilities shall be defined and communicated for effective Request Fulfillment
• Service desk should be the Single Point of Contact for the users; Ownership of service requests will rest with the Service Desk
• Single Request Fulfillment tool shall be used across the organization; All service requests should be recorded using this tool including:
• Call to service desk
• e-Mails to service desk
• Service desk should ensure the correct logging of service requests (incident tickets should not be logged as an service request)
• Service desk should correctly categorize all service requests
• Priority should be assigned to every service request based on the impact and urgency (Impact - urgency matrix and critical services list should be referred to)
• All service requests shall be provisioned/fulfilled only after required approvals are obtained
• All service requests that has impact on any CI should be fulfilled/provisioned post change approval; Change Management process should be followed at all times in such cases; Tagging of ticket to CI shall be done in all such cases
• Requests not auto-assigned by the tool has to be routed by the Service Desk to relevant support group
• In case the service request is assigned to a support group and not assigned to the individual support engineer, the accountability for ticket assignment lies with both the team/shift lead of that support group as well as with support engineers
• Progress of all service requests should be monitored by service desk and record updated on the progress till resolution and closure
• User should be updated regarding the progress of the service request as per the communication matrix agreed upon till closure of the ticket
• Escalation matrix should be clearly defined and followed
• All SLAs for Request Fulfillment including the ones related to service desk (average wait time, average hold time, etc.) as agreed with the customer should be adhered to
• Customer should be informed of any breach or potential breach of service levels
• Priority of service requests should be upgraded or downgraded only post approval from the concerned approval authority
• Request Fulfillment process performance shall be reported and reviewed periodically
• Continual Service Improvement initiatives should be taken up by Request Fulfillment

ACCOUNTABILITY & RESPONSIBILITY TOWARDS POLICY ADHERENCE

• Team Leads and delivery heads are responsible to ensure that their staffs are adequately trained to support this policy
• Request Fulfillment Managers, Service Desk Leads and Quality leads are responsible to drive adherence to the policy and process
• Accountability to adherence to policy and process lies with individual staff

BREACH:

Non-adherence to this policy will lead to disciplinary actions as per the organization's disciplinary policy and may even lead to termination of employment.

REFERENCES

Following documents should be referred to along with this policy document:

• Request Fulfillment process document
• Change Management policy
• Service Level Management policy