ITIL Change Management Roles and Responsibilities
Change management is a group that accesses, approves, implement and reviews a change in a controlled manner. Each role is responsible for completing a specific task. The roles identified in change management are –
Change Manager
The Change Manager acts as a facilitator, responsible for the overall change management process. His primary responsibilities are –
- Authorize and approve minor/low change
- Coordinate and conduct meetings with Change advisory board (CAB) to discuss higher risk changes
- Authority to implement or reject a change
- Ensures that all the activities designed to implement the change are as per the standards. The policies and procedures should be well defined, recognized and reviewed
- Prepare Change Summary Sheet that summarizes all RFC’s. This sheet helps the CAB team to understand and evaluate the proposed change
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Change Advisory Board (CAB)
It is a group of individuals that act as an advisory committee for the changes that are categorized as major or significant. CAB, along with
Change manager is responsible for final review; approval and authorizing a change .They have the authority to re-asses the risk level or impact level. They can request for additional information before approving a change or can reject it if required.
Emergency Change Advisory Board (CAB/EC)
A subset of CAB that acts as decision makers on the changes categorized as emergency. An emergency change needs to be approved and authorized immediately.
Change Requestor or Change Initiator
A person who initiates or requests for a change. The change requestor is required to provide all necessary information and justification for the change. Apart from this his other responsibilities include –
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Organize and plan activities for a change.
- Provide necessary information to the owner of the change
- Attend CAB meeting and provide necessary inputs to them
- Review and document change plan
- Resolve issues related to change
- Updates the user with the change activity
- Support and involve in testing activities before and after the implementation of change
Change Assignee/Tester/Implementer
The owner of the change – if the change requestor is someone else. His responsibilities include –
- Liaise with the change requestor for business and technical queries and issues, if any
- Create an RFC (Request for change) and update its status whenever required. Check and decide an implementation date, ensuring that it doesn’t conflict with other activities
- Assess and manage the risk involved
- Test and implement the change
- Coordinate and communicate with the other impacted team prior to submitting the change
- Once the change is approved create a remedial case for the scheduled change. Execute the change as on the scheduled date and time. Update the remedy case
- After successful completion provide closure status
- Document the change procedure after its implementation
Change Approver
Manager who provides first level approval to a RFC before it goes to CAB review. His responsibilities include –
- Review all RFC’s submitted by the change assignee
- Ensure all necessary communication; documentation and testing are done prior to approval
- Request for a review from technical peer who will ensure that all technical steps are appropriate and correct
- Approve or Deny the RFC
Changes are maintained and controlled through a
change management system – a tool utilized for tracking and documenting all the activities (initialization, approval, update, close) related to the proposed change.
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