Change - The process responsible for controlling and managing requests to affect changes (RFCs) to the IT Infrastructure or any aspect of IT services to promote business benefit while minimising the risk of disruption to services.

Change Management controls the processes involved in introducing changes to your IT environment. A Request for Change (RFC) could be initiated as a result of issues identified during the Incident and Problem Management process or as a direct request to implement new systems or functionality.

The ultimate aim is to limit the introduction of errors into your business and therefore the number of incidents being reported to your service desk. However, it is possible that incidents are often related to changes. Contributing factors could be poor impact analysis, lack of thorough testing, resource issues or simply teething problems.

A primary barrier to successful change management is that organisations often have a disjointed or informal approach, leaving individual areas to their own devices rather than providing a centralised and coordinated process. However, with NetSupport ServiceDesk's ability to gather and share information you will quickly see the benefits of introducing a structured Change Management system, with clearly defined reporting lines established.

There are two authorities in Change Management:

The Change Manager In the first instance a clearly identified Change Manager should be responsible for filtering, accepting and classifying incoming change requests and obtaining the appropriate sign off by management. The Change Manager would then plan and coordinate the implementation of the changes.

The Change Advisory Board (CAB) Establishing a CAB ensures each change request has the required visibility across all affected areas of the business. The CAB should meet regularly to assess, prioritise and plan changes. The Board's membership is flexible but would typically include the Change Manager (Chair), representatives from IT Support and Problem Management team, business managers and user group reps, systems managers and possible suppliers.

Within NetSupport ServiceDesk the members of each CAB can be pre-defined for each category of change request.

	NetSupport ServiceDesk supports the activities of Change Management as follows:
	Recording		NetSupport ServiceDesk provides a central point of focus for those wishing to log a change request and track its progress.
	Acceptance		Change Managers have all relevant information to hand to enable them to filter and accept RFC's for further consideration.
	Classification		Easy identification of RFC's by category and priority.
	Planning and Approval		Structured approach to planning and approval of RFC's, assignment of resources and establishment of a Change Advisory Board.
	Coordination		Easily track progress during the build, test and implementation phases with a range of management reports.
	Evaluation		Stored historical data helps you determine if the change has proved successful and logs any lessons learnt to aid users in the future.