Change Management Process

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Change Management Process

Need a change management process to transition to production and want practical suggestions to ensure rapid project implementation?

Objective

The transition to production phase will move the information management solution into a production environment. Change Management Process

The initial data will be pre-loaded and the data warehouse will be tuned for performance, if necessary.

What is change management?

A change is defined as anything—hardware, software, system components, services, documents, or processes—that is deliberately introduced into the production environment and which may affect a service level agreement (s) or otherwise affect the functioning of the environment or one of its components.

Information management change also involves change to the information management framework but this change management work is procedural in nature and does not involve transition to production.

All changes falling under this definition must be managed by the change request management process as changes may:

Affect multiple users;
Potentially disrupt business-critical services;
Involve hardware (such as servers or networking equipment) or software modifications;
Affect data stored and hence the data management, data movement and data presentation environments;
Involve operational and process modifications that affect multiple users; and
Require specialized change management skills.

Prerequisites

A change management methodology, including a release management process, should be established as part of the information management framework and all stakeholders need to be made aware of the importance of change management;

A change management plan should be completed as part of project planning or as part of change management planning and should include a change management issues and risks plan;

The quality assurance test phase, including system, integration, performance, regression, security, and user acceptance testing, should be complete; and

All test phase exit criteria should be completed and approved.

Tasks

The following change management process tasks are involved in managing change management:

Plan release. Deploying a software release into the production environment involves risks to the availability and reliability of that environment.

All stakeholders need to be aware of the potential risks involved in the deployment. And must also be aware of the benefits of change management. Recognizing this, the release manager should ensure that the appropriate managers agree on and sign off on the release plan before the release moves into the release testing phase.

The release manager should also form a change management team and confirm their availability for the release schedule.

Build release identifies and develops the processes, tools, and technologies required to deploy the release

An object migration plan should be created to identify configuration management change requirements and which project documentation components will be included in the release

A user acceptance test tests the release process to ensure that all components can be migrated correctly.

Prepare release package. The release preparation process:

Ensures that adequate resources are available for deployment of the release;
Ensures the processes defined in the change management quality assurance plan have been executed;
Ensures that change management communication plans have been executed;
Ensures that configuration and change management plans have been executed;
Ensures all training has been completed;
Confirms the production environment readiness for receiving the release;
Reviews the preparation of the release for deployment into the production environment; and
Ensures the change management process has handled all related changes including changes to all project management documents.

Deploy release involves:

The physical migration of objects into the production environment using the procedures defined in the release package;
Initial loading of history data into the data warehouse;
Providing production support.

Review/monitor release process:

Monitors the release after transition to production;
Reviews lessons learned from the deployment and documents them for future benefit;
Deals with unsuccessful release implementations by backing out, considering further remedial changes, or using the “accept issues and continue” policy; and
Finalizes project acceptance.

Change management process checklist

The following topics should be addressed as part of the change management process:

Approaches to change management;

Benefits of change management;

Best practices in change management;

Change and configuration management software;

Change and configuration management solutions;

Change assessment;

Change communication management;

Change database field management;

Change database management;

Change information management;

Change information management system;

Change information management technology;

Change it management policy;

Change management activities;

Change management and project management;

Change management and quality assurance;

Change management and software development;

Change management best practices;

Change management communications;

Change management configuration;

Change management database;

Change management development;

Change management information

Change management issues;

Change management methodology;

Change management of business requirements;

Change management performance;

Change management plan template;

Change management planning;

Change management plans;

Change management policies;

Change management practices;

Change management principles;

Change management procedures;

Change management process;

Change management process model;

Change management processes;

Change management project management;

Change management project plan;

Change management quality assurance;

Change management review;

Change management risk;

Change management strategy;

Change management team;

Change management techniques;

Change management tools;

Change management work;

Change manager;

Change process management;

Change project management;

Change request management;

Change request project management;

Communication and change management;

Configuration change management;

Configuration identification change management;

Configuration management change;

Database change management;

Documentation change management;

Enterprise software change management;

Implementing change management;

Importance of change management;

IT change management;

IT change management best practices;

IT change management policy;

IT change management process;

Managing change management;

Project change management;

Release management;

Release management process;

Release manager;

Release package;

Release plan;

Release testing;

Requirements change management;

Risks associated with change management;

Security change management;

Software change management;

Software release; and

Strategic planning change management.

Summary...

The transition to production phase will move the information management solution into a production environment. It is critical that this transition be carefully planned, tested and managed to ensure no disruption to the production environment. This planning should follow a pre-defined change management process.

All project team members need to be aware of what is change management importance.

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