Introduction to NonStop Operations Management

Change and Configuration Management
Introduction to NonStop Operations Management–125507
7-10
Case Study
Case Study
Effective planning and managing of change minimize risk and help ensure that customer
service levels are met. The following case study shows how a New England bank
implemented change control procedures to manage their growing environment.
User Profile
Allied Bank is a financial institution with 370 offices located in the New England area.
Current assets exceed $18 billion dollars. Allied Bank operates the Money Machine
Network of automated teller machines (ATMs).
The Money Machine Network consists of approximately 700 ATMs and interfaces to
cover 80 financial institutions. A Tandem system consisting of 8 G-series system
processors and 20 logical disk volumes is used to drive the ATM network and interfaces.
The network currently processes over 4 million transactions per month.
Business Background
The Money Machine Network has experienced a high rate of growth over the past two
years because of acquisition and aggressive marketing. In the past 24 months, the
network has grown approximately 350 percent in transaction volume and number of
ATMs. Projected growth for the next year is over 40 percent.
Because of their growing environment, Allied Bank has required frequent changes:
installation of new hardware, reconfiguration of system software, and application
changes. These frequent changes have resulted in several service outages in the past two
years.
Analysis of Problem
At Allied Bank, overall responsibility for change management was not defined. Changes
were implemented haphazardly, without always following formal procedures. Other
observations included:
•
Change management procedures did not exist. Changes to the environment did not
go through a formal change process.
•
Change schedules were not formalized, comprehensive, or communicated. Each
group had a schedule of changes that they were responsible for, but no one group
was coordinating all change activities. Consequently, an overall schedule of changes
was not kept across functional areas.
•
Changes were made without test, installation, or backout plans.
•
Configuration changes, both hardware and software, were made without risk
assessment, management approval, or communication to all functional areas.
Major changes, such as system software upgrades and new hardware installations, were
managed informally but more effectively than configuration changes. Allied Bank did
assign a project leader to develop a plan and manage the migration to a supported
release of the operating system.