[Tips & Tricks] Excel ITIL Change Management with Standard Changes
Every day, there is a need to perform a simple and low-risk change. For instance, most people (be it a user or someone from the IT team) don’t consider resetting a password to be a Change. But, according to ITIL, it is a Change.
To dive deeper, ITIL recognizes different types of changes. That’s sensible, because every change differs in many aspects. In this article, let’s consider changes like the example above, i.e., something that doesn’t actually seem like a change, but it is. More precisely, a standard change.
Standard change – What is it?
So, not every change is a change. Yes, there are differences.
For example, reinstalling someone’s workstation cannot be considered the same as upgrading the OS (e.g., Windows 8 to Windows 10) for an organization of, let’s assume, 2000 employees. Cost, scope, risks, resources . . . there are a lot of differences between them, aren’t there?
Though both examples are, actually, changes – it’s apparent that they are different.
First things first – what is a change? ITIL defines that, a change is “the addition, modification or removal of anything that could have an effect on IT services.” The ITIL approach to Change Management, as well as different types of changes, is explained in the article – 6 steps to implement successful ITIL change management.
A standard change is a pre-authorized change that is relatively common with low risk and follows a documented (and Change Management approved) process. Pre-authorized means that there is no authorization procedure needed and implementation activities are well known and proven. The cost is preordained (usually in the scope of the budgeting process).
Think standard, as in, ‘done according to the approved and standard process’.
How to use it?
By using a standard change, you have the opportunity to put some routine task under control that impacts IT services or users, without creating a complex environment that slows down the process. In order to have an effective standard change process, here are a few suggestions on how to handle them:
Logging/documenting – Most of you are familiar with the Request for Change (RFC) – a common form that is used to initiate a change. But, how about standard changes – do they need an RFC? Well, not a very formal one, but they do.
Service requests are the ideal way to handle standard changes (read more about managing service requests in ServiceDesk Plus). It could be argued whether standard changes need to be documented at all, but from my experience – do it. Yes, it’s not a big issue if someone requires a password reset, but imagine if half of the users in an organization require password changes after you change the password complexity – that could be problematic.
Here are a few suggestions on how to handle standard changes:
Plan it well – In general, when an organization implements a Change Management process, it will have a few or no standard changes at all. As they learn and mature, they will identify changes that occur repeatedly and are of low risk and low impact, such changes will be converted as standard changes.
The longer an organization has been doing the Change Management, the more standard changes it will have defined, and a higher percentage of all changes will be standard changes which is a good thing.
Classifying more changes into the standard type could be a very good indicator of transitioning to matured change management.
Manage your routine activities – Standard change enables you to perform some routine activities such as software patching and updates, new DNS entries, lifecycle replacement of hardware, firewall changes and so on immediately once a change request or requirement arises.
Although standard changes sound simple, every organization needs to decide for itself which kind of changes are going to be standard changes. To decide that, organizations must validate the risk, cost, impact of the change.
The benefits – So, as you can see, standard changes are not for complex issues, and they don’t incur significant costs or require many resources.
Standard Changes empowers an organization by allowing their IT members to make changes they are competent and capable of performing.
It can be an antidote to the complaint that “every little change has to wait for CAB approval”, and “Change Management just slows everything down”.
The Change Manager gets relieved from these routine changes and will have more time to focus on those Changes that require stringent control, ensuring a higher quality of changes.
Download our article for 6 Steps to Implement a Successful ITIL Change Management in your organization.