Frequently Asked Questions

Change Management is important, as it tracks the changes that we make to IT infrastructure and is part of the ITIL Framework that helps ensure efficient and consistent IT Service and Support.
Once you or your organization are setup properly in our Service Desk Ticket system, we can track changes that are proposed, in progress or have already been implemented to your IT infrastructure properly.
We can apply various ticket workflows to a Request For Change to ensure that all of the proper steps are taken both before, during and after implementing the change.
This creates a centralized documentation trail of all past, present and future change.

Note: The Change Management Framework described below will scale up and down in complexity based upon the size of your organization and the complexity of your IT Infrastructure and services both onsite at your locations and in the cloud.

Change Management will likely involve a Change Advisory Board (CAB) being established that spans both your organization and your IT support provider and IT related vendors. This might be a single individual within your organization. It might even be just you.
Or it could be an entire board of individuals within your organization representing different aspects of your organization that might be affected by a proposed Major Change or Normal Change.

You can initiate a Request For Change by opening a ticket through our Service Desk. There are several primary categories of Change.

• Standard Change
  A standard change is one that occurs frequently, is low risk and has a pre-established procedure with documented tasks for completion.
  Standard changes are subject to pre-approval in order to speed up the change management process.
  Change Models (a documented and repeatable plan for managing a specific type of change) that describe the process for handling recurring changes are often created for standard changes.
  If the standard change type increases in risk to the organization, it may become a Normal Change.
  Examples of Standard Changes could be adding a new firewall rule, deploying OS security patches, resetting a password for an end user account.
• Normal Change
  A normal change is one that is not standard and not emergency and typically requires an important change to a service or the IT infrastructure.
  A normal change is typically subject to the full change management review process, including review by the Change Advisory Board (CAB) and authorization/rejection.
• Major Change
  A change that may have significant financial implications and/or be high risk. Such a change generally requires an in-depth change proposal with financial justification and appropriate levels of management approval.
  Each organization’s process for identifying and managing a major change will differ depending on the size and complexity of the business.
  A change in this instance may change from being operational to tactical, or tactical to strategic and require a different level of authority for the approval.
• Emergency/Urgent Change
  An emergency change is one that must be assessed and implemented as quickly as possible to resolve a major incident.
  Emergency changes tend to be more disruptive and have a high failure rate, so they should be kept to a minimum.
  The exact definition of an emergency change should be defined in the change management policy.

Below these categories, are many different sub-categories of change including Application Changes, Hardware Changes, Software Changes, Network Changes, Documentation Changes, Environmental Changes.

When you submit a Request For Change (RFC) using our ticket system, you don't have to worry about the specific type of change you are requesting.
Just describe what you are wanting to do and we will worry about proper classification and determine the proper workflow for the ticket.