You can initiate New Change Request or initiate a change from one or more Problems. The Request for Change is considered based on the Business Impact, Urgency and Priority. The Change plan is formulated to get started with a the change process

The Change Plan needs to have complete details about the reasons for considering the change, how this change can impact business. The Change Planning stage needs to have following information so that Change Managers and CAB has all the detailed to make informed decisions.

• Impact Analysis - risk involved in implementing the change
• Rollout Plan - how the plan will be implemented
• Back out Plan - plan to restore things to back to original state if plan fails
• Checklist - List of mandatory items required for the plan to succeed

ServiceDesk Plus offers 4 different types of built-in Change Plans.

• Standard Change
• Minor Change
• Major Change
• Significant Change

ServiceDesk Plus allows you to define and configure your own Change Types with color codes to denote severity.

Standard Change

Standard Changes are pre-approved changes authorized by the Change Manager based on Management policies. Frequent changes such as permitted RAM upgrade to users or list of allowed software applications can be pre-approved by the Change Manager so that changes are fulfilled faster.

Minor Change

A Minor change is defined as a change that has low impact on business and does not consume lot of resources. The Change Manager approves the Minor Changes.

Major and Significant Changes

Major and Significant Changes need the approvals from all the members of the Change Advisory Board and the Change Manager. The members of the CAB (Change Advisory Board) are determined based on stakeholders who will be affected by the change. Based on the change plans and risk involved the CAB members will vote and recommend to Accept or Decline a change plan.

Change Advisory Board

ServiceDesk Plus enables you to create CABs. Based on the defined change type, you can choose to send the change plan for approval to CAB members.

The CAB Members meet once in two weeks or once in a month to discuss the changes that are submitted for approval. Based on the change plan and the risk analysis, the CAB Members take a unanimous decision to Accept or Reject a Change Plan.

• Forward Schedule of Change (FSC)

All Approved Changes have to be implemented with minimal service downtime. ServiceDesk Plus gives you built-in reports based on Priority, Urgency, by Incident, and Problem counts that helps Change Managers to prioritize and schedule changes.

• Change Calendar

Based on the changes considered for the next implementation, the changes are scheduled and published. The Change Calendar keeps everyone informed when a particular service will be down for maintenance and when it will be restored.

• Implementations

ServiceDesk Plus helps you keep track of important tasks involved in implementing an approved change. The task delegation helps Change Managers to assign tasks to technicians, schedule the task and track task status. The Task works like a simple to-do list and are child request to the change.

The Post Implementation Review helps Change Manager to keep track of the rolled out change to

• Capture the glitches that happened during the change
• Track KPI to measure the effectiveness of the change

As Change Management involves key business, it is important to maintain clear documentation about the change. ServiceDesk Plus keeps track of the complete change History. This helps to audit changes and get all the information such as, when the change plan was edited, when it was approved, who approved it and what time. The Property View helps you keep a record of all changes for auditing purposes.