Information Technology Policy Manual 2022

CHANGE MANAGEMENT POLICY

PURPOSE AND POLICY

This Change Management Policy defines the steps necessary to implement and maintain Change Management (CM) processes for the City of Greensboro’s Information Technology (IT) Department. This document will establish a foundation of what change and change management are, define the items needed for effective CM, establish roles and responsibilities of the people involved, describe the actual steps of the CM process, and specify how they will be accomplished. The purpose of this policy is to define a consistent approach to manage changes to the IT environment.

SCOPE AND OBJECTIVES OF IT CHANGE MANAGEMENT

The IT Department is committed to operational and service excellence. It is paramount that changes to existing system network architecture, internal and external services, products, processes, and any other significant technology based hardware or software application changes be documented, adjudicated, and vetted before implementing. The objectives of CM are to minimize the adverse impact of required changes on system integrity, to preserve security, to honor existing service level agreements or contracts, to enable the coordination and planning of changes in order to provide a stable test and production environment, and to maximize the productivity of persons involved in the planning, coordinating, and implementation of quality value-added changes. Typically, CM will be utilized to:

Take corrective action: an intentional activity that adjusts the performance of something already in progress.

Take preventive action: an intentional activity that ensures future performance goals are met.

Defect repair: an intentional activity to modify a non-conforming product or service.

Updates: changes to our current state of affairs or baseline, changes to existing products, services, new user requirements, or simply new ideas.

The City of Greensboro’s IT Department is responsible for applica tion services, geographical information systems, telecommunications, network services, security and compliance, and leasing/deployment of vital IT related products. The realm of information technology spans a diverse group of end users with responsibilities encompassing all areas of municipal government. Technology is thoroughly ingrained in most City Departments, and therefore any change has the potential to be significant. It is therefore critically important to manage change in a proactive and effective manner. It is important to note that each department has a finite amount of resources available to manage IT, therefore every effort to streamline this policy has been made to reduce the impact to our productivity.

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