Life-cycle of a Change Request

Life-cycle of a Change Request

Depending on the type and scope of a change, it may have a different lifecycle, or phases that it will go through.  HelpMaster supports the following stages of change management:

change management stages  

Within each of the stages, HelpMaster allows a degree of flexibility in the way that you implement that stage.

Define the change

At the heart of change management is the request for change (RFC).  This is a formal statement of “something needs to change”. 

An RFC contains all of the details of the change.  Different types of changes may require different fields, or information to be recorded. These can be configured as Change Request Templates.

See Creating and Defining a Change Request

 Approve the change

One of the principles behind change management is recognizing the need to attain correct permission and authorization to effect a change.  This is where a formal approval system is used.  Some changes do not require a formal approval process and are simply “pre-approved”. 

See Approvals and Voting on a Change Request

Implement the change

Once a change has been approved (via a vote, or pre-approved), the actual implementation of the change can begin.  Depending on the type of change, this may involve logging new jobs to track and manage the implementation, or it may simply involve doing the work, and documenting it within the Change Request.

See Implementing a Change Request

Review the change

Once a change has been implemented, a review process can initiated to determine whether the implementation was successful.  A review can highlight areas of concern, improvements, or quality control, or other observations.   Similar to the implementation stage, this may involve logging new jobs to track and manage the review, or it may simply involve reviewing the implementation and documenting the results within the Change Request.

See Reviewing a Change Request

Close the change

When the change has been completed, the final step is to close it off.

See Closing a Change Request

 


See Also

Change Management Overview