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Working with Change Approval Boards

•About the Change Approval Board

•Differences Between a Change Approver and a Change Manager

•Creating a Change Approval Board

About the Change Approval Board

Change approval boards are groups or individuals that evaluate change requests and make recommendations. The three types of approval boards are:

•Change Approval Board (CAB): Members of the CAB evaluate change requests. The CAB members make recommendations that are based on the impact on existing services, the cost of the change, and other relevant factors. The CAB members are chosen to ensure that business and technical positions are adequately represented.

•Emergency Change Approval Board (ECAB): Emergency changes must be made as soon as possible. Typically, ECAB members are critical CAB members who can decide on high-impact emergency changes. Depending on the nature of an emergency change, ECAB members can be chosen at the time an ECAB meeting is called. Examples of an emergency change are to resolve a major incident or implement a security patch.

•Management Committee (MC): Typically, MC members are critical department or group managers who make critical decisions about their area of operation. As in ECAB membership, MC members can be chosen at the time that an MC meeting is called. MC members are also chosen from the departments or groups that are involved or impacted by the change or while the change is implemented.

Differences Between a Change Approver and a Change Manager

In most organizations, the change approver and the Change Manager roles are assigned to different people.

Do not assign the people who requested the change, work with the change, or implement the change to approve the change. Each different role has a different scope, business priority, and represents a different area in an organization.

Typically, a Change Manager manages the lifecycle of changes. Change Managers determine the necessary changes and requests changes that cause a minimal amount of disruption to the organization.

A change approver determines if the change will help the organization and if the cost of the change will benefit the organization.

Creating a Change Approval Board

1.Log in to the application as a Change Manager.

2.Open the Change Approval Board workspace. The list of change approval groups appear.

3.Click New Contact Group. A blank group page appears.

4.Complete the form as described in Using Contact Groups.