Standard Changes with approvals vs Change Model

[Sue Frost]

I'm trying to find the best way to meet the request.

We have a robust Standard Change catalog. The majority of our Standard Changes do not require extra approvals but a few do. (These are related to rate changes, so even though this is a pre-approved process, its makes sense to require an approval on the actual rates.) We've put in some custom code to deal with this. The code requires that approvals are created and approved before the change can move from New to Scheduled.

Now, we have situations where users are creating Standard Changes and doing the release without progressing the change from the New state. (Yes, it's a process/learning issue. No, that's not going to change.) The request was made to ensure that the Approval field is NOT set to Approved until the change is progressed to Scheduled.

These two situations are mutually exclusive.

Still reading? I'm trying to find a way to make both things possible. Someone suggested using Change Models but I'm not finding a lot of documentation on those and how they are used.

Would it make more sense to move the Standard Changes with approvals to be low-risk Normal changes? 

What other options are out there?

Is there another / better way to approach this?

TIA!

[Brian Lancaster]

I would say they should be low risk normal change. By ITIL definition if it requires approval it is not a standard change. One other thought would be how do you get these rate changes. Do these come in via a request? If so maybe the approvals could be there instead of in the change.