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Manage change risk

Outcome
Your team will understand how to use the change calendar to identify potential conflicts as they identify change types and build automation to address risk.
Processes
  • Create a change calendar
  • Block important timeframes as appropriate, for example, block out/freeze periods
  • Identify change types and define risk factors for each
  • Create automation rules to enforce the logic you’ve identified
    • Practice area(s)
    Change enablement
    Product(s) in scope
    Jira Service Management (Premium or Enterprise)
    Role(s)
    Technical SME, Incident Manager, Problem Manager, Change Manager, Technical Lead, and Administrator
    Change Types
    Step
    Process
    Notes/References
    1
    PLAN
    Validate the change type to understand the flow of where it will go
  • The change type is typically captured at the initial creation of the change request. There are three main types of change:
  • Standard - low-risk, frequently repeated that has all of the necessary documentation created and approval from necessary stakeholders
  • Normal - significant change to a service or application that doesn’t occur very often, so adequate planning and approval is usually required
  • Emergency - depending on the change, and the service/app, emergency changes often skip most if not all the steps in the change management process to get to implementation in order to restore a service ASAP.
  • Depending on the change type, the change request may follow a different path and require different levels of review/approval to apply the right level of prevention of risk
  • Definitions of change types will vary by organization; owners of the change management team should collaborate on these definitions to create a global language to all services/apps
  • Change management types
  • Update the change management workflow | Jira Service Management Data Center and Server 5.5
    • 2
    PLAN
    Review the change calendar
  • The change manger should review the change calendar to identify any potentially conflicting dates or block out periods.
  • Conflicting dates may come from scheduled changes for dependent services/apps planned for the same time period.
  • Depending on the change type, there should be adequate time planned between the creation of the change request and the implementation date to accommodate for review, testing, and approvals.
  • What is the change calendar?
  • Show change requests on the change calendar
    • 3
    PLAN
    Update change details related to risk accordingly
    1. The service team, or owner of the change, should ensure that relevant details on the change request are completed that help minimize the risk of the change. These fields include:
  • Implementation plan
  • Back-out plan
  • Required/completed testing
    • 2. Utilize Insight to identify related assets to understand the scope and potential impact of the change
    The level of risk tolerance is going to vary greatly based on the organization and industry. Many organizations will have a balance of non-negotiable rules, like GDPR and other compliance requirements, as well as internally-set policies. This may have a significant impact on what fields are required for a change request to be processed.
  • Set up the Assets object field
  • Visualize relationships in Insight Asset Manager for Jira
    • 4
    AUTHORIZE
    Get the right approval required
    The higher chance of risk and impact, generally, the more approval is needed.
    1. Consider the difference between approval and awareness. Do certain stakeholders need to approve pending changes or simply be informed before they are implemented?
    2. Interview organizational stakeholders and service sponsors to determine the appropriate level of approval needed for various types of changes
  • Set up an approval stage
  • Set up notifications for your customers and team
    • 5
    CLOSURE
    Review change management process to find areas to reduce manual work
  • Automation can be used to enforce change management policies and governance. Examples of where automation can be applied include:
  • Setting the priority based on a calculation of the impact and urgency selected on the request
  • Using Insight to determine related services, apps, assets, approvers, stakeholders, etc.
  • Proactively staying on track with upcoming changes using Insight automation
    • The more that can be handled with automation in the service project, the risk of conflicts or misclassification can significantly decrease.
  • Jira Service Management automation templates
  • Jira Cloud automation
  • Examples of Insight automation rule configuration | Jira
    •  
    Process a change record

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