ServiceTeam ITSM: Keep up with a fast moving world with Change Management

The importance of an established change management process cannot be overstated for the smooth running of IT. Say you specialize in a banking app and one of your customers asks you to change one of the features in the app. This isn’t a simple update. There is very confidential information in the bank’s database being accessed in these apps. No shortcuts can be taken in releasing this update and this becomes trickier when you count the number of different teams involved in getting this job done.  They may or may not have the same understanding of the process that needs to be done. Approvals, processes, and needs can vary vastly from team to team. Employing a proven and standardized process for implementing these changes is not only more cost effective, but also instills confidence in your service desk team because they have a proven process they can rely on to do their job well.

Even when narrowed down to change management, there are different types of changes that need to be treated differently:

• Standard changes are pre-authorized, low risk IT changes that follow established procedures and are the easiest to prioritize and implement.
• Normal changes are those that must go through a typical change process before being approved and implemented.
• Emergency changes are unexpected changes that must be implemented immediately, such as a security threat.

Simplifying Change Management

Provance ServiceTeam ITSM’s latest updates make it easier to follow ITIL Change Management best practices, with business process flows supporting all types of changes, including Normal, Standard and Emergency changes. The template driven format simplifies and standardizes the process, while still being flexible enough to allow adjustments where necessary.

ServiceTeam ITSM Enterprise provides a template approach to work plans and work plan steps.  This ensures that a structured process is followed for each change request and makes implementing a standardized and routine approach possible.

Make it a team effort

Change management isn’t just a one team process.  Roles are distributed across the organization with the development, operation and support teams being just a few teams that may be involved. These roles include:

• Change requestor – the person responsible for initiating, preparing and submitting a change request
• Change owner – the person who documents the process across the change lifecycle and ensures the change request is being followed up on at the required urgency
• Change approver – approves or denies the change as necessary

ServiceTeam ITSM Enterprise makes it easier for IT organizations to receive the request, involve development teams, and update support so they can inform the customer. Role-based visualization brings the right information into focus, an especially important feature when even a simple change request requires the coordination of so many moving parts across teams.

Kanban Boards in ServiceTeam ITSM Enterprise helps encourage collaboration by making the next steps visible for all involved.

Conversations during change management are essential, but managing them can get overwhelming.  A missed communication can have a significant impact on the entire process. ServiceTeam ITSM Enterprise streamlines this process and automates communications, so all parties are updated at the appropriate time. ServiceTeam ITSM Enterprise helps to ensure processes and steps are clearly understood by all involved and allows for efficient management of change requests.

The Change Calendar displays the listing of Service Windows and provides a glimpse into the current change requests and their impact with respect to resource and technical scheduling.

Seamlessly sharing data and work steps between the Change Management team and the Development team is an important part of the process as well.  ServiceTeam ITSM Enterprise provides out of the box connectors with Azure DevOps and Jira that facilitate the creation and update of work items directly from ServiceTeam.  The teams can independently complete their work in the appropriate tools while collaborating on tasks that improve the overall service management process.

IT is always changing. That’s why one of the foundations of great service management is having an efficient change management process that supports and helps people implement changes that bring about the desired outcome in the most effective way. ServiceTeam ITSM Enterprise from Provance provides the tools to let you do this in an efficient, ITIL-based best practice manner.

Here are some other resources we think you might be interested in:

Blog Post: Great ITSM: What You Need to Know, What You Need to Do

Blog Post: Great ITSM: The Most Important Tools

Blog Post: Build vs Buy: Here’s 7 Reasons You Should Buy Software Rather Than Build It

Webcast: City of London Transforms IT Services with ServiceTeam ITSM and the Microsoft Power Platform

For more about ServiceTeam ITSM Enterprise, our full product capabilities, or to arrange for a demo, please contact us at info@provance.com.