Availability Guide for Change Management

Change Control
Availability Guide for Change Management–125506
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Phase 2—Change Planning
Phase 2—Change Planning
One of the most difficult tasks in change control is determining how the change affects
your system and application availability. If the change affects availability, you also need
to determine how to minimize system or application downtime when implementing the
change. Thoroughly assessing the impact of change, determining what resources are
required to implement the change, and creating a plan for the change help minimize
planned outage time.
The change planning phase involves the following tasks:
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Assessing the impact of the proposed change
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Identifying the resources required to implement the proposed change
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Determining when to make the proposed change
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Creating a change plan
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Testing the change plan before implementing the change
Assessing the Impact of the Proposed Change
Assessing the impact of the proposed change involves the following tasks:
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Determining what will be affected by the change and identifying dependencies. For
example, application changes not only affect applications, but they also can have an
affect on configuration files and command files.
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Determining the scope of the proposed change. Does the same change need to be
made on other systems in the network?
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Identifying users, devices, and applications that may be affected by the change. You
should contact all affected groups to inform them of the proposed change.
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Identifying possible training requirements for staff and end users.
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Ensuring that service level agreements are still met after the proposed change is
implemented.
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Determining what activities can be done online versus offline to minimize
downtime.
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Determining outage versus non-outage activities. For example, can you minimize
downtime by performing certain activities before taking the system down?
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Identifying resources required to manage and support the change once it is
implemented. For example, the proposed change may require new run book
procedures, operator messages, and so forth.
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Identifying all contingency and backup requirements for the proposed change.