Change management overview

The Change process workflow ensures that each Change is completed efficiently. A flexible user interface enables you to create, assign, monitor, notify, and report the status of Change assessments, approvals, and implementation tasks, leveraging a best practice ITIL process with defined roles.

You can do the following:

• As a service provider, define a Change for a particular customer; you can further define the Change as one that applies to a specific customer location or configuration item (CI). Based on your security settings, you can strictly segment customer data so that it is viewed only by authorized customers and employees.
• Using a workflow, manage all of the major steps in a Change in a flexible and efficient way.
• Use the workflow to efficiently automate standard Changes that do not require assessment, scheduling, or authorization.
• Use workflows that are especially designed for express Changes to manage these types of Changes.
• Use a workflow that is especially designed for advanced Changes to manage these Changes.
• Thoroughly assess the impact of a Change on configuration items (CIs) in your data center, using advanced automation features to streamline your impact assessments.
• Specify exactly the assets and CIs that are targets of a Change.
• Define blackout periods during which Change Owners must be cautious in scheduling Changes, specifying approvers who sign off on Changes that are scheduled during a blackout period.
• Use advanced scheduling and conflict detection capabilities to reduce unplanned outages and ensure that Changes do not disrupt key business operations.
• Organize and manage Change implementation tasks using job plans that follow your best practices.
• Dynamically customize Change implementation tasks, responding to changing needs as they arise.
• View Change status and pending tasks in real time.
• Integrate Change Management with other process managers to efficiently manage a wide range of operations using a single point of control.

Best of all, Change Management enables you to achieve incremental value by adopting a process, growing and adapting the process at your own pace, and adding automation and other advanced capabilities.