Change Management Howto / comments

[entr04y]

I've spent the last couple of days trying to understand how the change management workflow works in ITSM and can't seem to make heads or tails of it.

We have a couple of different workflows depending on the change type, I'll list out the steps involved in the most complicated (network change)

1) network admin creates a change request
2) 2nd network admin does a peer review and approves/modifies
3) manager approves change
4) security manager approves change
5) change manager schedules change
6) network admin does work
7) change is reviewed
change is closed or rolled back

If I understand the process correctly we have to create the change, then create a workorder describing the actual change, then create a workorder describing rollback, then create 4 workorders to facilitate approvals (we, like many other operations groups, do not do a physical CAB meeting, everything is done via email/ticket system today), then create conditions to move the ticket through the workflow.

What I am not getting from the documentation or the boards is:
1) how to move the workorders/changes from "created" to the approval process and on through the workflow
2) how to actually approve a workorder. The ticket states are not approval states in the conditions, and without turning on manual state changes I don't see how to move the ticket thorugh the system.
3) How to assign approval to a group rather than an individual. This leads to tickets being assigned to an individual who is on vacation, out sick, or stuck on a plane all day instead of to a group that has members that all have the same authority.

What i don't understand is why the process in OTRS::ITSM is so complicated. I get having a change container that contains multiple changes for complicated changes, but the workorder should be a single ticket that moves through the approval and scheduling process. In addition, the approval tickets do not automatically contain any information at all about the original change, which then requires that the approver go back and click through a number of different workorders to see what it is they are approving, or requires that the change builder add the same details in each approval workorder.

Unless there is something I am fundamentally not understanding here, it seems the process in OTRS::ITSM is designed for a mega corp environment where you have someone dedicated to creating and managing change orders who is different from the people doing the work, and a CAB that is dedicated to reviewing changes in a structured meeting environment. This just does not (in my experience anyway) translate into a real-world use case for most IT operational environments.

I'd really like to be able to use the change management feature in our organization so that we get the change overview and scheduling screens so I am hopeful that someone can walk through this for me and all the others who have raised similar questions.

Thanks!

[lemi1364]

I agree totally with your comments. I'm looking at implementing change management in my organization as well and I find that the approach used by OTRS is more complex that it needs to be. To get around the approval process (which I agree should be done electronically using the tool as opposed to have a change manager having physical meetings and/or create work orders for each approval), I am considering simply creating a ticket with type rfc and assign it to a queue which would consist of the CAB approvers. Each approver would get automatically notified of the ticket and can use the Decision function to record their decision. Once the change builder has received all the approvals (which would show as Notes in the rfc ticket), he/she can use Create Change to create the change from the ticket so that the rfc ticket is linked with the change.

One inconvenient part that is missing in the approach is that the approvers would have to leave the ticket open so it would remain in the queue until all approvers have responded at which point the change builder can close the ticket. The approach is somewhat manual but much simpler than the approach of using the involved persons function, workorders, and conditions.

Let me know what you think or if you find a better approach.

[CV_itsm]

We are using OTRS ITSM to deal with tickets. We are implementing Change Management and we don’t want to use another application. Therefore we are trying to implement OTRS CM Module.
We have spent much more than a couple of days and we feel far away from our goal.
1. Changes and Work Orders are assigned to persons (not to groups). We don’t understand why. When dealing with tickets OTRS manages groups and it doesn’t when dealing with changes. As we are not a huge organization we think that we will be notified when somebody is absent, we will search for changes or work orders assigned to them and then we will manually move changes and work orders to somebody else.

2. It is not possible to link a change to any CI in the CMDB. An error occurs: “The Object ITSMChange cannot link with other object!” We have opened a bug.

3. We will define different Models. Each model will include empty work orders that will be filled for each change. It also will include approval WO and conditions. The conditions will assign the WO to persons when the approval step is completed.
We don’t find an automatic way to avoid that Builder could approve the change. Conditions don’t allow changing the builder. We think that Change managers will do it manually.

[yuri0001]

Hi!

We don’t find an automatic way to avoid that Builder could approve the change. Conditions don’t allow changing the builder. We think that Change managers will do it manually.

Try to change StateMachine and use special templates for Standard(very simple) Change. Аdd more transitions from any state to another bypassing some previous. It make possible to bypass some state transitions in Change and WorkOrder Templates
I'll don't try it but hope it works
Sorry my bed English!

[AndreMedeiros]

Hi

I would like to confirm the information that OTRS ITSM CHANGE MANAGEMENT will be discontinued in next otrs versions?
Will there be NO OTRS Change Management module in future:

Someone could be confirm this information
Thank in advance.