Overview of ITIL Change Management

ITIL defines a change as the addition, modification, or removal of an approved, supported, or baselined hardware component, network, software, application, environment, system, desktop build, or associated documentation. The primary goal of the ITIL Change Management process is to ensure that standardized methods and procedures are used for efficient and prompt handling of all changes, in order to minimize the impact of change-related incidents upon service quality. Although changes often arise as a result of unexpected problems, most changes result from planned requests for change (RFCs) from the business or IT organization.

ALM content bundle allows users to submit RFCs along a predefined Request for Change process toward resolution. ALM portlets can be added to a user's PPM Dashboard to monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) related to the submitted RFCs. Additionally, reports can be run to obtain summaries and scheduling details.

Use ALM entities discusses the OpenText PPM entities that ALM provides for use in the ITIL Change Management process, including the following:

  • Change Management request type, named ALM - Request for Change (RFC)

  • Associated Change Management workflow, named ALM - Request For Change

  • Associated Change Management portlets

  • Associated Change Management reports

Change Management Roles

The following roles play an active part in the ITIL Change Management process:

  • System Owner

  • Change Manager

  • CAB group (Change Advisory Board) or CAB/EC group (Change Advisory Board – Emergency Committee)

    • Change Manager

    • Customer(s)

    • Applications Development Manager

    • QA Manager

    • Operations Manager (or maintainers where appropriate)

  • Change Builder

  • Independent Tester

  • Applications Development Manager

In addition to being valuable divisions of responsibility, these roles are used to designate user security for the default ALM - Request For Change workflow (see ALM - Request For Change Workflow).