Analyze and Classify Potential Change

Effective Change Management involves the proper processing of requests for change. Usually, a change is driven by a configuration item that has been identified in need of a change. The configuration item is usually the purpose for a change.

Sometimes a graphical representation of the personnel, organization structure, and equipment can help you to determine how a change can affect the organization. See The CI Map.

Standard change templates are used for preapproved standardized types of changes. These changes bypass the approval process. Change Managers, however, always have the option of classifying some standard changes as major or emergency, thereby making the change go through an approval process.

After a non-standard change has been requested, the Change Manager makes an assessment on the risk, the impact, the cost, and other factors that determine whether the change is feasible or not.

After a change goes into requested status, the Change Manager can decide whether the change should go forward, be deferred, or be denied. The Change Manager can determine the risk associated with the change (see Setting the Risk Level). The Change Manager can also view the CI map for a visual of the services that might be impacted by or impact the change.

Change Urgency, Impact, and Priority

The Change ManagerEnsures that changes are introduced into the organization with minimum disruption to existing services. The Change Manager can initiate a change request, but usually manages the change through its lifecycle. can prioritize the change based on urgency and impact. By default, HEAT prioritizes change requests based on the urgency and impact, as follows:

		URGENCY
		High	Medium	Low
IMPACT	High	1	2	3
	Medium	2	3	4
	Low	3	4	5

The priority is automatically calculated by the system and appears in the change record:

Change Priority

Change Categories

Based on ITILInformation Technology Infrastructure Library. A set of practices for HEAT that focuses on aligning IT services with the needs of business. Change Management categories, HEAT allows Change Managers to categorize changes as follows:

Category	Description
Minor	Small changes that have a minor impact on the organization.
Emergency	Urgent changes that must be made. Emergency changes are typically implemented first and created after the change has been made due to the urgent nature of the change. As a result, emergency changes are typically posted to the calendar after the change has been made for auditing purposes.
Major	These changes usually consist of a great number of items or dependencies and can also lead to other associated change requests.
Significant	These changes have a large significant impact on the organization.
Standard	These changes are routine, understood, and generally accepted changes that the entire organization understands as necessary for normal operations. As a result, the approval board does not need to meet and accept a standard change. Changes of this type are generally performed on a regular basis. These changes are preapproved. Some of the changes that are created from a service request fall into this category. The customer is already entitled to the service, so approval is not necessary.