SOP - Change

Management

Chad Conant
5/26/2016
Contents
Revision History.......................................................................................................................................... 3
References .................................................................................................................................................. 4
Overview ...................................................................................................................................................... 5
Audience ...................................................................................................................................................... 5
Assumptions................................................................................................................................................ 5
Content Management ................................................................................................................................ 5
Quality Controls .......................................................................................................................................... 5
Objectives .................................................................................................................................................... 6
Submitting a Change Request ................................................................................................................. 6
Required Information ............................................................................................................................. 7
Change Approvals ...................................................................................................................................... 7
Emergency approvals ............................................................................................................................ 8
Standard approvals ................................................................................................................................ 8
Roles and Responsibilities .................................................................................................................... 8
Sponsor................................................................................................................................................ 8
Change Requester ............................................................................................................................. 8
Change Approver(s)........................................................................................................................... 9
Change Manager ................................................................................................................................ 9
Deploying a Change .................................................................................................................................. 9
Workflow ...................................................................................................................................................... 9
Revision History
Revision Descripti Author Authored Approve Approved Release Release
on Date r Date d By Date

1 Initial Chad May 26, Jim May 26, May 26,

Conant 2016 Walker 2016 2016

2 Annual Chad October Chad October Chad October

Review – Conant 17th, 2017 Conant 17th, 2017 Conant 17th, 2017
No
Changes
3 Standard Chad December Chad December Chad December
approval Conant 1, 2017 Conant 1, 2017 Conant 1, 2017

4 Added R. 03/14/2018 JW 03/14/2018 03/14/2018

Change Calderon
Process
Section
References
Location Filename Title Version Source
Overview
The purpose of this document is to outline the Change Management process for when a
customer requests a change to existing services or addition of new service.

Audience
The document was created for individuals involved in the Change Management process
(Customers, engineers, managers and CSMs).

Assumptions
The assumptions in this process are that Customers have access to and are trained in using the
customer portal or support through email.

Content Management
Any change to this document requires approval by the executive team.

Quality Controls
This document will be reviewed annually, and adjusted as needed. Any required changes to the
process are documented as versioning of the document.
Objectives
The Change Management Process involves the ongoing process of planning, coordinating,
implementing and monitoring changes affecting pre-production and production work
environments for customers.

The objectives of the Change Management Process include the following:

• Provide a consistent, managed approach to change

• Reduce failures in the customer production environment caused by change
• Clearly define roles and responsibilities within the change process
o Requestors
o Approvers
o Implementers
o Change Managers
• Changes to the production environment are approved by the appropriate customer
Management prior to implementation
• Changes to the production environment are only performed by authorized personnel
• Changes to the production environment occur with minimal disruption to the services
that are committed to the customer
• Ensure that effective pre-change communications are provided to all potentially affected
parties regarding all changes affecting the production environment
• Support the efficient and prompt handling of all changes
• Ensure all changes are consistent with business, technical and strategic plans
• Ensure that consistent methodologies and procedures are used, including but not limited
to in-depth testing (QA), availability of rollback plans and procedures, and a detailed
timeline for implementation.

Submitting a Change Request

Any change to existing Production services or addition of new Production services from a
customer is considered as a Change Request and must be submitted to CloudHesive Support.
Only a named user (designated during onboarding) can submit requests to change services.
Requests made by any other user will be forwarded to the named users for approval before any
work is completed. All requests are submitted through email (support@cloudhesive.com) or the
support portal (support.cloudhesive.com).

Changes that are not expected to impact Production environments or have been pre-approved
by the customer are considered Standard changes, and do not require CAB approval. These
requests are processed and authorized by the Change Manager.
Support will review the request to determine if sufficient information has been provided and will
then respond to the customer if more information is needed to process the request. Then a
Change Request will be opened on behalf of the Customer and assigned to an engineer to
execute the request.

Change Requests are considered as a Severity 3 (non-critical) item and are completed within 72
hours or during the next scheduled maintenance window. If the request is intended to resolve an
existing Severity 1 or Severity 2 incident, the Customer must inform Support when making the
request. Emergency changes will be executed based on the Severity 1 or Severity 2 Response
and Resolution Times (see SOP – Customer Support Process).

Required Information
The following information, at a minimum, is required to process Change Requests:

• If the change is intended to resolve a Severity 1 or Severity 2 Incident

• If the request is new or a change to an existing service or request
• What is being changed
o Hostname, IP Address, URL, Protocol/Port or type of connection (Internet, VPN)
o Directory or File
o Group, User, Login or Role
o Website, Webservice, Application Pool or Service
o Database Instance, Name or Object
• The exact steps that are being taken/need to be taken for the change
o Each step should have the name of the person doing the change and the timings
• The impact during the change
• The duration of the impact
• How will the change will be tested (and by who)?
• How will a rollback will be determined (and by who)?
• What is the rollback plan (for example, what should be backed up ahead of time)?
• How will the change will be determined as successful (and by who)?
• Where was the change tested prior to being performed in Production (and by who)?
• If additional information is needed to process the request, CloudHesive Support will
contact the customer through the ticketing system

Change Approvals
All requests to change or add services to production environments must be approved by the
Change Advisory Board (CAB) before deployment. The Change Advisory Board is comprised of
a Change Manager, Lead Customer Success Manager and Team Lead Engineer. Meetings are
held the day before each maintenance window (Wednesday and Friday) to review all
outstanding change requests. The CAB reviews each request to determine the risk and severity
of impact for the request, to minimize or prevent potential disruption of services to the customer.
If the request is determined to have a negative impact to services, the customer is contacted to
discuss the potential consequences of the request and decide on final plans for the change
request. Approved requests are scheduled for deployment during the following maintenance
window.

Emergency approvals
If a request needs to be deployed outside the scheduled maintenance windows in a timely
manner, the CAB will hold an emergency review meeting on an as-needed basis to decide
approval for the emergency request. Deployment time frames for emergency requests will be
coordinated with the customer.

Standard approvals
Standard approvals are changes that will not impact production environments or have been pre-
approved by a customer. For example, pre-scale up and scale down of servers in anticipation of
increased traffic (e.g., online sale). CAB approval is not required to process these changes,
instead the Change Manager reviews and validates the request.

Roles and Responsibilities

Sponsor
The Sponsor of the change is the person who is ultimately responsible for the acceptance of the
change after testing. As part of user acceptance, the sponsor accepts any risks identified during
the test phase.

Change Requester
The Change Requester is the person who creates and submits a Change Management
Request. Although any person in the customers’ company can submit a change request, the
customers’ primary contact will need to authorize the request on behalf of the requestor.
Change Requesters have the following responsibilities:

• Owns complete Change Management life cycle (creation to closure) of change request
• Ensure that a Change Request is created and submitted for management approval prior to
the change occurring
• Ensure that a Change Request is only submitted for approval once both Development and
User Test is complete, if applicable, and user acceptance to implement the change is gained
• Ensure that the change request is complete with accurate information at a sufficient level of
detail so that the change may be implemented without intervention
• Enter and update the Change Request into the Service Desk tracking tool. Assess the
change request for risk/impact and ensure the appropriate risk category has been applied
• Ensure that proper lead-time for changes are allowed
• Submit the Change Request for Management Approval
• Attend the weekly Change Advisory/ Approval Board meeting to discuss the change.
Attendance is required prior to the implementation date to address any questions, concerns
or cross team impacts
 • Ensure appropriate closure code assigned to change request after change has been
implemented
• For repetitive changes, submit a new change request with the new date and complete
approval process or create multiple tasks within the change tickets indicating the
implementation of each change

Change Approver(s)
Change Approvers are the designated persons that are responsible for ensuring that all
appropriate steps within the process have been completed and have been requested for the
respective change.

• Confirm that Business sign-off was received from the appropriate sponsor
• Authorizes the change via the automated tools in place.
• Change Approvers are usually in the CAB meetings

Change Manager
The Change Manager is the control point for changes to production and has the following
responsibilities:

• Enforce the Change Management Process

o Ensure change requests are adequately filled in with the required information.

Deploying a Change
Requests are deployed during the customer’s nearest available maintenance window after CAB
review and approval. Requests must be received by 3:00 pm EST the previous business day.
While our engineers make every reasonable effort to approve changes during our CAB peer
review meeting last minute observations and changing environments may result in an initial
change request denial. Change requests that are denied during CAB review will be noted in the
change request ticket and further review will be required. In the event of these situations our
engineers will make every effort to communicate with customers to remediate any concern as
quickly as possible with an aim to put the change on the customer’s next available maintenance
schedule.

Once the change has been deployed, the Change Request will be closed, and the Customer
notified.

Workflow
Is the Schedule the
Customer submits Change Manager Triage the request at Is the request Notify customer of
information Y Y request for Deploy change
Change Request reviews request CAB meeting approved? completed change
complete? deployment

N N

Notify customer that

Obtain additional change was rejected
information from
customer