Skip to content

Change Management Board

The Change Management Board is held every two weeks via Teams and is attended by a nominated Chair and Deputy. At the board the changes raised will be discussed and approved or rejected. The tickets will then be tagged Change Approved or Change Rejected as appropriate.

It is expected that the majority of changes will be raised, discussed and approved offline. However, changes which are expected to cause or risk causing a significant disruption must be taken to the Change Management Board for approval. If you are unsure please ask the current Chair or Deputy or post to the Change Management Slack Channel which is available for discussion.

The Meeting

Every two weeks a Change Management Board is held in Teams. At this meeting the chair or deputy will generate a list of changes which have been raised are are likely to require approval from the Change Management Board based on their judgement.

Unless an exception is in place all changes which fall in to the following categories must be brought to the next Change Management Board meeting:

  • Changes which will or are highly likely to cause disruption to the user community.
  • Changes which are unlikely to cause disruption to the user community, but if they do could cause serious disruption beyond the end of the planned change window.
  • Changes which could cause disruption to the user community significantly beyond the end of the planned change window.
  • Changes where the impact is not well defined or unknown.
  • Changes with scheduled period longer than 8 hours.
  • Changes which occur outside of normal working hours.
  • Changes which must occur alone with no other changes implemented at the same time.
  • Changes which may cause damage to hardware.
  • Changes which may cause harm to people.

If you raise such a request you must inform the Chair and/or Deputy and be prepared to attend the next Change Management Board. If you are unable to attend you should attempt to get another member of the team to represent the change. If there is no representative the Change Management Board can, at their discretion, attempt to discuss using the information provided in the ticket. Be aware this could delay approval if something is flagged which could have been covered quickly in the meeting.

If the Change Management Board is happy with the change, but there are minor deficiencies in the request they can be discussed and the change still approved on agreement that the deficiencies will be rectified in an additional comment on the request. This can be added during or shortly after the meeting.

If there are serious deficiencies in the request the change will be rejected by the Change Management Board. The existing request should be closed and a new ticket be written to the necessary standard.

If the requests falls somewhere in between the Change Management Board may decide to neither accept nor reject the change request. At the meeting it should be discussed what needs to be done to allow the request to be approved. This may be to provide more information, delay due to a conflict or other action. It should be discussed if the change request could be approved offline or if it needs to be brought back to the board.

Change requests which pass all the following acceptance criteria may be accepted by the Change Management Board:

  • The change request contains all the sections required.
  • The change has a good quality implementation, test and backout plan.
  • A clear communication plan is provided if appropriate.
  • The timing of the change is acceptable.
  • The change will not adversely affect any other planned change.
  • The change is not adversely affected by any other change planned to take place at the same time.
  • The changes does not conflict with any major milestones.
  • The change does not take place during a Period of Restricted Change (PoRC) unless unavoidable or an emergency.
  • The change has the resources it needs to be completed as described.
  • All questions have been answered to the satisfaction of the Change Management Board.
  • The Change Management Board is satisfied the change can be completed safely.

The Change Management Board can still reject a change for any reason even if the above list is satisfied if it is justifiable. If there are any reasons the change cannot be approved, but it passes all of the above the request should be updated to reflect the decision and the rationale. It should also include information on what the next steps are for the change if any.

An emergency change can still be approved if parts of the acceptance criteria has not been met, but this must be in extremis only and must be justifiable. If this happens the request should be updated to reflect the decision, the rationale and any mitigating action or circumstance.

Recommending Alterations to the Change Management Process

If you have ideas for altering the change management process these should be brought to the Chair and/or Deputy of the Change Management Board. If you wish you can bring discussion for alterations to the Change Management Board meeting or arrange a discussion as a whiteboarding meeting.

The Change Management Board will then collate these suggestions and present them to the Leadership Team. It is the Leadership Team who own the change management process and only they can agree an alteration to the process.

When an alteration to the process is made it will be advertised via the Change Management Slack Channel and/or the necessary documentation will be updated.