08:08:12 Information Technology Systems Change Management

Purpose

Define change management procedures for system changes and deploying new software, software patches, and major updates into the production system environment.

Policy

1. Introduction
   Change Management refers to a formal process for making changes to IT systems.  The goal of change management is to increase awareness and understanding of proposed changes across an organization and ensure that all changes are made in a thoughtful way that minimize negative impact to services and customers.
    
2. Definitions
   For the purposes of this policy, all definitions are defined in WSCC Information Technology Definitions Policy 08.08.07.
    
3. Scope

​A. Requests

All requests for new applications, patches, firewall changes, and major updates to existing applications and infrastructure must be documented via a Help Desk ticket.

2. Testing and Production Environments
   Each mission critical system such as the ERP system or other institutional core applications must be set up in both a test system, where feasible, and production system environment. This is to allow for functionality, quality assurances, and certification of all updates by the functional user community prior to being scheduled for deployment into the production system environment.
    
3. Review and Approvals
   All requests must be reviewed and approved by the Data Trustee prior to outages being scheduled for changes to the production system environment.  Approvals must be made by someone other than the person requesting or implementing the change.
   The security and operational impact is documented and reviewed in the outage plan. Rollback procedures are to be established in the even that modifications are unsuccessful.
    
4. Outages and Impact
   Outages will be scheduled during windows that best suit the needs of the Institution and comply with the restraints set by other governing agency and authorities (TBR and State of Tennessee).

11/15; 09/17; 05/21; 10/21; 10/22; 04/23