As near as I can tell, Change Management is the process for continuous improvement (or evolution) through corrective changes to a service, and works at the component level of the services (CIs, assets, processes). Release and Deployment Management is more the process for quality assurance of all existing and planned services - with a more strategic approach.
A few quotes from references on Change and Release Management might help, since the ITIL v3 diagrams and texts generally seem to place Change Management and Release Management adjacent to each other under Service Transition: Van Bon, Jan, ed. Foundations of IT Service Management Based on ITIL V3 (2007): "Changes can be bundled into a release." P.238. Klosterboer, Larry, Implementing ITIL Change and Release Management (2009): "Release management is like an orchestra conductor, and change management is like the musicians." P.6 "Change management provides a disciplined approach to implementing IT changes. Decommissioning a service, upgrading an infrastructure component, and adopting a new delivery process are all examples of changes that should be tracked by the change management discipline. Each change is considered in isolation and flows through a set of steps, including identification, documentation, assessment, authorization, execution, and evaluation." P.6-7. "Release management provides a strategic approach to implementing an IT service." P.7. "...an IT service is a set of components and service assets that work together to provide a unique benefit to the organization. Before ITIL V3, many organizations used the term "IT system" instead of "IT service." "System" places the focus on IT components, whereas "service" emphasizes value to the organization. P.7. "Service transition consists of the short-term view of change management and the long-term view of release management." P.7. So, Release Management is Strategic, and Change Management is Operational. IMHO, the ITIL V3 model has now added so many overlapping functions to the V2 model, probably to meet new oversight requirements, that it is no longer comprehendible. It's no wonder that the software vendors are finding it hard to instantiate the ITIL defined "processes" into coherent application modules. I hate to say it, but ITIL is probably overdue for a complete redesign, with consolidation and simplification as its goals. Christopher Strauss, Ph.D. Call Tracking Administration Manager University of North Texas Computing & IT Center http://itsm.unt.edu/ From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Rick Cook Sent: Monday, July 26, 2010 7:03 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Change Management question ** I was talking to our local ITIL folks about this this morning, and their opinion was that BMC constructed the Release/Change relationship backward - that Change should be above Release. I have heard others say the opposite, so maybe that's true, maybe not, and there was agreement about there being sufficient wiggle room that a company could use it either way, but that got me wondering why BMC did it the way they did it. Then it hit me. If they put Release between Change and Task, it would have broken up the Change module. So they put it on top of Change. The problem with that is that the way they have constructed the relationships limits the customer's ability to use it in a Change --> Release scenario, due to the fact that while Releases can be related to RFCs, they cannot be dependent upon them - the Parent/Child scenario only works when Release is on top. That makes the process of monitoring completion of all Releases under a Change a manual one. It also makes Tasks almost unusable. That's not a major problem for us due to some other process and tooling issues, but it will be for many. So against my better judgment, and with the understanding that it is not optimal from a scaling and efficiency perspective, I feel that we will end up using a Master RFC controlling one or more Releases, which would then optionally control one or more subordinate Changes. I will submit an RFE to BMC to enhance the relationship options, but I don't see them changing that any time soon. Rick On Sat, Jul 24, 2010 at 10:59 AM, Guillaume Rheault <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: ** For the complex situation you described, I think the following scenario is the best: Release --> Change/Activity --> Task Approvals can be configured for releases, so you won't be missing that initial approval. Also as you know, you can relate task templates to change templates, to "standardize" the work to be done Guillaume ________________________________ From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>] on behalf of Rick Cook [[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>] Sent: Friday, July 23, 2010 3:59 PM To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Subject: Re: Change Management question ** Well, having Release at the top allows things to flow Release --> Change/Activity --> Task. Putting Release below Change eliminates the ability to use Tasks, since they can't be directly subordinate to a Release. So our options for a dependent (i.e. Parent/Child) flow are: Release --> Change/Activity --> Task --OR-- Change --> Task --OR-- Release --> Change(s) Do I have that right? Rick _attend WWRUG10 www.wwrug.com<http://www.wwrug.com> ARSlist: "Where the Answers Are"_ _attend WWRUG10 www.wwrug.com ARSlist: "Where the Answers Are"_ _______________________________________________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org attend wwrug10 www.wwrug.com ARSlist: "Where the Answers Are"
