What is the difference between Normal change and Emergency Change and Standard Change?

[ram2497]

What is the difference between Normal change and Emergency Change and Standard Change?

Please provide, For example, it's more helpful for understanding.

Thanks

Ram

[kenny_vl1]

Hi Ram,

there's a good article on itsmtransition.com explaining your question.

Here's the brief reply though :
While ‘Normal’ and ‘Standard’ sound like two ways to describe the same thing, there’s a big difference. A Standard change must have a documented process that’s been reviewed and approved by Change Management. A Normal change is a non-emergency proposed change that needs to be reviewed by Change Management.

How this translates into ServiceNow:

Standard change

A standard change is a pre-authorized change that is low risk, relatively common and follows a specified procedure or work instruction.

A standard change is one that is frequently implemented, has repeatable implementation steps, and has a proven history of success. As Standard changes are pre-approved, they follow a stream lined process in which group level or peer approval and CAB authorization steps are not required.

Approved standard change requests can be predefined in a catalog of templates to make accessing and requesting a standard change more efficient. This ability also enables the Change Management team to control the changes that are authorized as standard.

Emergency change

A change that must be implemented as soon as possible, for example to resolve a major incident or implement a security patch. This change is of such a high priority that it bypasses group and peer review and approval and goes straight to the Authorization state for approval by the CAB approval group.

Emergency changes cover the following types of emergencies:

• Fix on fail or retroactive situations where the impact to service has already been experienced.
• Fail or fail situations where the impact to service is imminent if action is not taken.

These changes do not follow the complete life cycle of a normal change due to the speed with which they must be authorized. Therefore, they progress directly to the Authorize state for approval from the CAB Approval group.

During an emergency change, there are chances that an unplanned CI change activity occurs. During such a case, an unauthorized change request is created and sent for approvals. For more information, see Unauthorized change request.

Normal change

Any service change that is not a standard change or an emergency change.

Normal change requests follow a prescriptive process which requires two levels of approval before being implemented, reviewed, and closed. These changes require a full range of assessments and authorizations such as peer or technical approval, change management, and Change Advisory Board (CAB) authorization, to ensure completeness, accuracy, and the least possible disruption to service. These changes are most often scheduled outside of defined change blackout windows or during defined maintenance windows. The normal type is used to implement beneficial change for any change to a service that is not a standard or emergency change.

I hope that explains it to you. I did not write this above text myself, but simply copy-pasted from the mentioned sources.

If this reply was helpful, please mark it as such.

[Hitoshi Ozawa]

In a nutshell, standard change are predefined activities such as rebooting a server that doesn't require review each time.

Emergency changes are those that need to be done quickly so can skip review before implementation but may require review afterward on what was changed to fix the situation.

Normal changes are those that are planned and reviewed before implementation.

[Sudhanshu Talw1]

Hi,

Standard Change:

Preapproved changes with low risk & follow a common procedure or work instructions.

Emergency Change:

Should be implemented as soon as possible.

They don’t follow complete lifecycle of normal change due to the speed with which they must be authorized.

During an emergency change for unplanned CI change an unauthorized change request is created and sent for approvals.

Normal Change

Neither Emergency nor Standard Change

These requests follow a prescriptive process which requires two levels of approval before being implemented, reviewed, and closed.

I have also attached a doc. Refer to it.

Following diagram is helpful when considering the difference in standard/normal/emergency change.

Practically we can deploy standard changes anytime it does not follow the change request window procedure like emergency & normal & are used for configuration changes rather then scripting changes.

Thanks

Sudhanshu

[Abhijeet Khandr]

Hello Ram2497,

The below video link will help you to understand the change management process in detail and difference between Normal, Standard, Emergency change

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSncN53K054

Please mark helpful and correct in this reply helped you

Regards,

Abhijeet