Change reporting

Wed, 24 Mar 2021 10:31:10 GMT

I'm looking at improving our reporting on change implementation for managed service customers and wondered if people class a change implemented with issues as a successful change?

Do people only classed backed out changes or changes that impact customer services as failed?

Wed, 24 Mar 2021 12:15:36 GMT

Hi Sara,

My feeling is that the by the book answer would be there is no such thing as "successful with issues", if it had issues, it wasn't successful.

However I feel the more practical and real world answer would be that it depends how you have defined it. Almost every organisation I have been involved with has some variation of a category for this.

The most common way I have seen it handled is to have a status and sub status where the status can be "Successful" and the sub status would explain "Successful with Issues" obviously this would be dependant on the configuration of your ITSM tooling.

Ultimately my advice would be to have some clear internal guidance and common understanding as to what quantifies successful with issues and what would class as failed.

Wed, 24 Mar 2021 13:35:34 GMT

Hi Sara,

Chris Kingsbury's advice is excellent as usual.

If it helps I have used "assisted" as a term to describe a change which was implemented with issues. I wouldn't call those successful, but equally they are not a failure either.

Chris is spot on that it would help to agree guidance and a common understanding on this. Same goes for how to categorise a change that followed the agreed backout plan within the change window.

What I've previously used to do this is a Change Management Policy which sits over the detailed "process" .

Those that have worked with me will know I have a range of quotes for ITSM good practice. In this case "a change has failed when it requires an incident to restore service" comes to mind!