Network Management /

Managing Networks and Telecommunications M

Change Management

Network Communications Manager

Telecommunications
Excerpt of position advertisement from APEX Resource Solutions

9 month fixed term contract, start ASAP

Background in Telco required with strong project, change and
communication
i ti mgmtt
Key role in delivering to the companies number one strategy

Opportunity to join a lead player in the Australian telecommunication

industry and play a pivotal role in the delivery of customer communication to
changes around network outages.
It is expected that you are a very organised and people focused person as
yyou will be the conduit between a number of teams including
g engineers,
g
deployment managers, marketing and customer support. Needless to say it
is imperative you are able to work across all areas of the business.
You will bring with you a background in telecommunications, with the ability
to turn complex technical jargon into simple customer messages.

Network Communications Manager

Telecommunications (continued)
Key responsibilities

Proactive management of all planned outage events

End to end coordination of notifications
End-to-end
End-to-end coordination of Customer information and web content
Maintain and develop the outage management plan
Ensure that plans are aligned closely with marketing, brand, local
area marketing and advertising planning to ensure mixed messages
are not given to a local market
Ensure the business is receiving all appropriate information across
the board from all sources to adequately manage each outage
Grant a business go / no go for engineering projects to go ahead,
based on agreed policies and procedures
Reactive management of unplanned outages as and when they occur

Network Communications Manager

Telecommunications (continued)
Essential Experience

Campaign management, communication and strong knowledge of

project management with particular strengths in planning
Negotiation and ability to deliver things cross functionally
Good understanding of the Telecommunications industry and
market, with the ability to turn complex technical jargon into simple
customer messages
Effective collaborator and strong cross functional team player, with
ability to work across all levels of the business
Excellent planning abilities with the natural risk management ability
Customer focus
Exceptional communication skills
Proven delivery experience in working in a high pressured
environment, with tight and ever changing timeframes

Best Practices

Change Management: Best Practices 2008, viewed 28

September 2012,
2012
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/technologies/collateral/tk869/t
k769/white_paper_c11-458050.html

Guidance that is scalable for:

Different kinds and sizes of organizations
Simple and complex changes
Changes with major or minor impact
Changes with specific timeframe requirements
Different levels of budget or funding available to
deliver change
5

Outline

Background / Motivation
Definitions
Roles and Responsibilities
Change Process Models
Change Management Tools
Continuous Process Improvement

Objective

The objective of the change management process

is to minimize service downtime by ensuring that
requests for changes are recorded and then
evaluated, authorized, prioritized, planned, tested,
implemented, documented and reviewed in a
controlled and consistent manner.

(page 3)

Business Goals

Efficiency - standardised methods and procedures

Documentation configuration management system

Risk managed and minimised

Alignment changes support business needs and goals

Service Change
A service change is any addition, modification, or
removal of authorized, planned, or supported
service or service components and its associated
documentation.
Types of changes:

Application changes
Hardware changes
S ft
Software
changes
h
Network changes
Environmental changes
Documentation changes

(page 4)

Change Management System

Status of change requests:

Open
In-Progress
Approved
Rejected
Closed
Cancelled

10

Roles and Responsibilities

Major roles:

Change iinitiator
Ch
ii
Change manager
Change advisory board
Change implementation team (operations)

11

Change Initiator
Initially perceives the need for change and
develops, plans, and executes the steps necessary
to meet the initial requirements for a Request for
Change (RFC).

Product manager
Network architect
Network engineer
Service manager
Support engineer
Security manager

12

Change Manager
Dedicated change manager in a large organisation
would be responsible for:

Updating and communicating change procedures

Reviewing and accepting change requests
Conducting change review meetings
Compiling and archiving change requests
Auditing network changes
Change communication and notification
Managing change postmortems
Creating and compiling change management metrics

13

Change Advisory Board

Supports the authorization, assessment and
prioritization of changes.
Potential members (variable):

Customers
User managers
User group representatives
Applications developers/maintainers
Specialists/technical consultants
Services and operations staff
Facilities/office services staff
Contractors or third parties representatives
Other parties (ex: marketing if public products are
affected)
14

CAB & ECAB Composition

Change procedures need to specify how the composition

of the CAB and ECAB are to be determined.

CAB composition needs to be flexible to ensure

business interests are properly represented.

ECAB composition needs to provide the ability, from

both a business and technical perspective, to make
appropriate decisions in any situation
situation.

15

Change Process Models

Models provide the framework for defining the steps
needed to handle changes consistently and
effectively.
ff ti l Includes:
I l d

Steps to handle change (including exceptions)

Chronological order of steps including dependencies
Responsibilities
Timescales and thresholds for completion of actions
E
Escalation
l ti procedures
d
Approval authority
Quality or performance measures and objectives

16

Change Models

Normal change
Significant (high-risk) change
Major change
Minor change
Standard (pre-approved) change
Expedited (short-interval) change
Emergency change

17

18

Normal Change

(1) Plan the Change

(1) Test and Validate the Change
(1) Create Change Proposal
(2) Approve Change Proposal
(1) Document the Change Request *
(1) Create the Request for Change *
(1) Technical Review and Signoff
(2) Review the RFC
(2) Assess and Evaluate the RFC *
(2) Authorize the Change
(3) Plan the Updates
(3) Implement the Change
(2) Post Implementation Review
(2) Close the Change

20

10

Document the Change Request

Change ID (unique ID)

Description
Identification of the CI(s) to be changed
Date and Time
Implementation Steps
Category

Minor
Significant
Major

Back out (remediation plan)

Timeframe (Window)
21

11

Assess and Evaluate the RFC

7 Rs:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5
5.
6.

Request/Raised change
Reason for the change
Return required (enablement)
Risks involved (impact)
R
Required
i d resources
Responsible for build, test and
implement
7. Relationship with other changes
24

12

Risk Matrix

High Impact
Low Probability

High Impact
High Probability

Low Impact
Low Probability
(Candidate for
Standard
Change)

Low Impact
High Probability

25

Standard Change

Defined trigger to initiate the RFC

Tasks are well known, documented, and proven
Authority is effectively given in advance
Budgetary approval typically preordained
Risk is usually low and always well understood

Create RFC

Implement
Change

Close Change

26

13

Emergency Change

Emergency Change Authorization

Emergency Change Building, Testing and

Implementation

ECAB instead of CAB

Levels of delegated authority need to be clearly
documented and understood

Changes allocated to technical group for building

As much testing as possible

Emergency Change Documentation

Temporary records at the time with completed records

retroactively

27

Change Management Tools

Change Ticketing Tool

All requirements collected

Scheduled for implementation
Status updated communicated to stakeholders
User generated reports

May be integrated with trouble-ticketing tools,

problem-management tools, configuration database
which helps to improve efficiency.
efficiency

28

14

Process Improvement Program

Goal of PIP is to achieve the following CSFs:

Repeatable process for making changes

Make changes quickly and accurately
Ensure changes are driven by business needs
Protect services when making changes
Deliver process efficiency and effectiveness benefits

Main activities:

Process measurement
Process reporting
Process assessment
Process improvement
29

Process Measurement

Performed on a weekly or monthly basis

KPIs established during change management

process design collect and evaluate on a regular
basis

30

15

Process Reporting

Performed on a monthly or quarterly basis

Reviewed by change management staff as well as

service, IT and business management

Presents summary information (dashboard /

balanced scorecard) based on KPIs

Include trend analysis and potential process issues

31

Process Assessment

Performed on a semi-annual or annual basis

Audit a sample of changes for compliance to process

Audit change management process for completeness,
efficiency and effectiveness
Evaluate against previous assessment period
Benchmark against industry best practices
Compare current status with CSFs
Establish improvement
p
actions
Re-evaluate CSFs for next assessment period

32

16

Process Improvement
Prepare a Process Improvement Plan which includes:

Deliverables
Due dates
Implementation resources
People responsible for completion

33

Examples of Measures
Operational Metrics:

Number of incidents caused by unsuccessful changes

Inaccurate change specifications
Incomplete impact assessment
Unauthorized changes & percentage reaction
Percentage reduction in time, effort, cost to make
changes
Reworks caused by inadequate change specifications
Percentage improvement in predictions
Percentage improvement in impact analysis and
scheduling

Workloads:

Frequency of change
Volume of change

34

17

Examples of Measures (cont)

Process Measures:

Satisfaction with speed, clarify, ease of use

Number
N
b and
d percentage
t
off changes
h
th
thatt ffollow
ll
fformall
procedures
Ratio of planned versus unplanned changes
Ratio of accepted to rejected change requests
Number of changes recorded and tracked using
automated tools
Time to execute a change
g
Staff utilization
Cost against budget

35

Example KPIs
Used to measure the performance of the change
management process:

Change efficiency
Ch
ffi i
rate
t
Change success rate
Emergency change rate
Change reschedule rate
Average process time per change (days)
Unauthorized change rate
Change incident rate
Change labor workforce utilization
Change management tooling support level
Change management process maturity
36

18

Summarising Measures
Reported to management via a dashboard or
balanced scorecard.
Examples:

KPI change success rate calculated as:

number of failed changes / total changes implemented

CSF Protect services when making changes calculated

using the KPIs emergency change rate, unauthorized
change rate, change incident rate
37

19