Change Lesson

A recent Emergency Change got me laughing because the requester made a judgement decision that comes with probably being fairly young!

At various times of the year, the University has what we call "Tech Timeout" where we are extra cautions not to disrupt services that our students, faculty and staff rely on during critical times. Any changes that are allowed to these critical services need to be approved by a Director and as such, they are mostly going to be Emergency or very urgent changes.

As the Change Manager, I was pre-notified of one such change coming in the next few days, which I always appreciate! I did remind the Manager to please make sure to note in the CR that the exception to the Tech Timeout policy was granted and by whom.

A few days later the change comes into the system and as you guessed, there is no indication of a Director approval anywhere in the change. I did note that a Director was cc'd in the work flow of the change meaning he will see the chatter between the requester and the CAB. So I leave a comment, "Checking on Tech Timeout Exception." in the CR.

I then walk over to the Manager's area and as I am walking the actual requester shouts, "I thought he knew about the change?" To which I respond, to their surprise, I did and I also asked there to be a reference to the Director approval. The requester says, and here is the fun part, "I put his email address in the notification list, that's not enough?"

Well, no. Actually it's not enough.

It's sort of like if I were to send my wife an email at 5:00 pm "asking" her permission to stop out for a few drinks and then simply heading to the bar. This is a big difference from coordinating with my wife and getting an agreed consent to stop on this evening for a few drinks with co-workers.

So without any background information on the change, the Director was being "informed" and not necessarily giving his/her permission for the change to proceed.