Change Management and ITIL Service Management
As the field of information technology (IT) has grown in complexity and importance to organizations and businesses around the world, the need for a structured system of how to make changes and improvements emerged. For this reason, the UK Government’s Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency developed a library of standard practices which became known as the Information Technology Infrastructure Library or ITIL. Through these sets of procedures a common form of service management has developed for the various IT problems and changes that can occur in an organization.
If you made it through that paragraph, then you know that this discussion involves lots of long acronyms which can lead to some confusion. On a simpler note, it is important to know that an organization or business of any size cannot function unless they have some form of IT in place. However that IT is designed, it will need to change over time in step with the organization’s changes. To avoid breaking the system the standards outlined in the ITIL were adopted.
All ITIL represents is a collection of documents of best practices. IT professionals with ITIL certification understand their role and the steps involved in managing their company’s information technology. This allows them to easily coordinate with other IT professionals within and outside of the organization because everyone has an established role and process to follow that is universally understood.
Change Management
While ITIL processes include many different types of management, such as Incident Management, Release Management, Problem Management, and Configuration Management; this article will focus on its affects and interaction with Change Management. An organization relies on its IT infrastructure to be able to communicate, share information, and track the progress of their objectives, so any changes to this active environment need to be handled in an efficient manner that does not compromise the system. This ultimately falls under the umbrella of IT Service Management (ITSM) and quality service to the company and customers.
The process for change within the IT framework begins with a request for Change, or RFC. These are looked at to compare how this type of change will affect the overall system. If the RFC is accepted it will be placed on the FSC, or forward schedule of changes. The various departments are brought up to speed on this schedule and how it will impact their workflow. This information is especially important for the service desk because they will be responsible for communicating between the IT department, customers, and those within the company. Finally, the RFC is officially closed upon successful implementation.
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