IT organizations need to manage change and the risks that come with it. That change may be reactive, resolving errors and adapting to changing business circumstances. Or it may be proactive, reducing costs, increasing efficiency, and providing new services and functions to increase user satisfaction. Either way, uncontrolled or poorly managed change leads to major incidents and problems, and results in adverse effects on business operations and satisfaction. It can also be a significant stumbling block in corporate governance and compliance initiatives.
— ServiceNow Change Management Data Sheet
The ServiceNow Change Management application increases the efficiency of change, reduces the risk and cost of change, and provides stakeholder visibility into changes and their potential impact. It aligns with the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) framework—the most widely accepted approach to IT service management. In this installment of our NOWSupport best practices series, you can learn more about change management, including best practices for implementing it in your organization.
First, check out this Change Management Overview video on our NOWSupport YouTube channel:
And now, here are some best practices for implementing the Change Management application in your organization:
Make effective use of the three types of service changes
The ServiceNow platform supports the three types of service changes described by ITIL: normal change, standard change, and emergency change. Become familiar with these three change types so that you can implement them effectively.
For example, the standard change type provides opportunities to improve efficiency by moving common, low-risk changes—with repeatable implementation steps and a proven history of success—to the standard change catalog, where users can request them through self-service as pre-approved changes. Removing these routine changes from the approval queue not only gets them done faster; it also frees up time for the change management team to focus on IT or business changes that are higher risk and impact.
The Change Management application provides unique, prescriptive state models to move and track each type of change request through several states:
These states and their transitions are based on sound models and ServiceNow proven practices.
Check for conflicts before implementing changes
Conflict detection identifies potential scheduling conflicts, such as changes that are scheduled at the same time or that impact the same configuration items (CI) and related CIs. It also lets you know when a change occurs outside of the maintenance schedule or during a blackout schedule, so that you can reschedule the change, if needed. You can run conflict detection manually or enable it to run automatically.
Calculate and assess the risk of change
Use the integrated Risk Calculation and Risk Assessment features to calculate and assess the risk of change. The Change Risk Calculator is active in the base system by default. It uses predefined properties and conditions to calculate a risk.
Manage and control beneficial changes
Leveraging the ServiceNow platform's powerful approval engine ensures that all necessary parties are notified and involved in the change approval process.
Use the CAB Workbench to schedule, plan, and manage CAB (change advisory board) meetings
The CAB Workbench delivers efficiencies in scheduling, planning, and managing CAB meetings, all on the Now platform. Using this powerful feature, you can:
- Define the meeting schedule, and have your agenda and attendee list generated automatically for you.
- View potential conflicts in the change conflict calendar.
- Approve or reject change requests in a single click.
- Record and capture action items and decisions in a meeting notes widget that stores any notes in the related CAB meeting record.
Meeting attendees have the option to set notifications, allowing them to attend CAB Meetings only when needed. This lets them focus on the day's work and creates additional cost savings for the organization.
For more information, see:
- Change Management (product documentation)
- Change types (product documentation)
- Standard change catalog (product documentation)
- State model and transitions (product documentation)
- Conflict detection (product documentation)
- Risk calculation and risk assessment (product documentation)
- Change Advisory Board (CAB) workbench (product documentation)
- ITSM Value Realization Webinars - Calendar
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Behind the scenes here at ServiceNow, the Knowledge Management and Multimedia teams work closely with subject matter experts to disseminate critical information to our customers. We've found that certain topics come up frequently, in the form of best practices that can help you keep your ServiceNow instances running smoothly. This series targets those topics so that you and your organization can benefit from our collective expertise. If you have a best practices topic you'd like us to cover in this series, please let us know in the comments below.
To access all of the blog posts in this series, see our NOWSupport best practices series list.
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