The Change Initiation Review process contains four essential steps:
- Plan review meeting
- Prepare for review
- Conduct review
- Follow up on review
As shown in the following figure, the output from the Change Initiation Review is a decision to approve or reject a particular request for change (RFC).
In the Change Initiation Review, the change manager, change advisory board (CAB), or CAB emergency committee evaluates the feasibility of the change for acceptance into the operations environment. This includes review and approval of:
- Plans to mitigate potential impacts on the production
environment (for example, acquisition of necessary hardware or
human resources).
- Readiness plans for preparing IT operations to accept and
operate the change.
- Operations and support plans, aligned with infrastructure
requirements, standards, and policies.
- Project budgets, which successfully compare costs and benefits
of implementing the change into the production environment
(organization and infrastructure).
If it is approved, the RFC is assigned a change owner and moves into change development preparations, as led by the change and development teams. Otherwise, the RFC is rejected and returned to the change initiator until the necessary improvements in the request are made, or it is cancelled. The Change Initiation Review is aligned with change authorization in the change management process, as shown in the following figure.
