I often get asked where change evaluation takes place. Isn’t it part of change management? It is a separate process however it is driven
by change management and is triggered by the receipt of a request for
evaluation from Change Management. Inputs come from several processes including
the SDP and SAC from Design Coordination, change proposal from SPM, RFCs,
change records and detailed change documentation from Change Management. It holds discussions with stakeholders
through SLM and BRM, testing results from service validation and testing to
ensure that its members have a full understanding of the impact of any issues
identified and that the proper risk assessments can be carried out against the
overall changes and in particular the predicted performance, intended effects,
unintended effects and actual performance once the service change has been
implemented.
The purpose of change evaluation is to provide a uniform and
structured means of determining the performance of a change relating to the
likely impact on the business, on any existing or proposed services and the
current and future IT infrastructure.
Every change must be authorized and must be evaluated to provide the
change authority with accurate and up to date advice and guidance at each stage
of the change process. Only significant
changes will use the formal change evaluation process. Criteria must be defined
and agreed to ascertain which changes fall within scope of this process and
which do not. Each organization is
unique and will define a unique set of criteria that meets their specific
requirements.
The objectives for Change Evaluation are as follows:
- Set stakeholder expectations correctly and provide effective and accurate information to Change Management to make sure that changes which adversely affect service capability and introduce risk are not transitioned unchecked.
- Evaluate the intended effects of a service change and as much of the unintended effects as is reasonably practical given capacity, resource and organizational constraints.
- Provide good-quality outputs so that Change Management can expedite an effective decision about whether or not a service change is to be authorized.
- Change Evaluation occurs both pre and post implementation.
The value
of all this evaluation is to establish that effective and efficient use has
been made of your resources in terms of benefit delivered. The proper capturing of this information and
knowledge will create the wisdom to allow a more accurate emphasis on value in
future service development and change management.
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