In addition to the volume of normal or
standard changes your organization requires to have completed you will also
have to manage the way that escalated changes are managed. While the above
mentioned change types have a consistent way that they are generated there will
always be exceptions. An example of this will be the definition of what makes
an emergency change and what is simply urgent. In reality each have their own
place. Like 2 brothers they may be related but certainly they are not the same.
Meet Ur Gency
Ur, the younger brother has a tendency to be a
bit impatient. You might find him looking at his wrist, even if there is no
watch, or tapping his feet. He has an ingrained need to make everything a
priority 1 despite whatever is going in around him and despite any other
activity priority.
Meet Emer Gency
While Emer, the older brother likes to take over when
things go a bit outside the lines. Comfortable in chaos, he likes to get all
the moving parts back in line and things working again.
Both brothers like to get things moving as
quickly as possible and can work well with teams. But as in life we must ensure that we are moving forward
with the right amount of due diligence to ensure that there are no additional
issues. This is why we need to clearly define the difference between the two,
because much like a parent you won't choose one over the other but will need to
manage them just a bit differently.
As changes come in, depending on your service
management system, you will need to filter through what is an emergency vs.
what requires urgent attention. In some environments everything that is
escalated may appear to be an emergency. If you were to verify this with the business
they may even say that if this doesn't go in heads will roll.
Remind
them to breathe…..
Emergencies are likely the result of a break,
a critical incident of some sort. Service to our customers is currently
unavailable due to some circumstance or event. Urgent changes may be the result
of a potential issue. For example if we do not put this in ASAP there will be an
Incident.
Understanding and documenting the differences
in the changes is important. If we can report on this in some way we may be
able to manage or in other cases prevent these from happening again. in the
case of urgent changes we might identify that 8 of the 10 times it happens it
is the result of a Vendor who has less than stellar communication skills when
it comes to visiting sites. Being able to quantify that fact allows us to
review that with them when appropriate.
To summarize having a clear understanding on
what constitutes an Emergency vs Urgent changes will allow you to ensure that
changes are being prioritized correctly and that all input and output processes
are performing optimally.
Labels: Change Management, ITIL, ITSM, Service Management