• by Vikram Gajjala

Understanding ITIL Change Advisory Board

The consistent technological advancements sweeping across many global firms have enabled them to gain a competitive advantage and provide more value to their clients. However, the increasing integration of digital transformation into these firms' operations has necessitated the need to balance two crucial aspects to a company's success. Firms must balance the agility leveraged in delivering new products and services and the resilience emanating from the stability of current operations.

To ensure all the emerging technological trends are easily integrated into a firms' operations, there is a need for an organization to invest in a change advisory board (CAB). A change advisory board refers to a group of individuals in an organization whose role is to assess, prioritize, authorize and schedule the most suitable changes. In essence, they are the drivers of system change management and its risks. The change advisory board ensures that an organization can benefit from digital transformation. They work to reduce the chances that any mishaps can occur from system changes, such as when configuration changes disrupted the normal operations of Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp in October 2021.

Which Members Sit at The Change Advisory Board (CAB)?

Generally, the members of a change advisory board should preferably possess expert knowledge in technology and business fields. This will ensure they can forecast the effects-both positive and negative-of technical changes. According to the ITIL framework, the most critical members comprising the change advisory board include:

• Change Manager

The change manager chairs or runs the change advisory board. Their main role is to structure CAB meetings, delegate, and communicate tasks to other members.

• High-level IT managers

These include operations managers, IT security managers, network engineers, and business relationship managers.

• Head of departments

Technical changes usually sweep through multiple departments simultaneously. Therefore, the representatives of all affected departments, i.e., the department heads, are included in the change advisory board to offer their input regarding proposed changes.

Other people included in the CAB are system owners, technical leads, and change process coordinators.  

What Exactly Does A Change Advisory Board Do?

As we have established, the change advisory board (CAB) is a special committee that exists within the ITIL framework. The change advisory board evaluates the proposal when a change request is submitted. It does not have the power to approve changes but advises on whether they should be approved and implemented.

Some of the roles of the change advisory board include:
 

• Assessment

The change advisory board receives documents (Request for Change documents) detailing proposed changes. Then, the CAB assesses potential risks and rewards that may emanate from the proposed changes.
 

• Authorization, rejection, or request for revision

If the CAB advises that the technical changes should be undertaken, the Change Manager approves the change. If the CAB rejects the changes request, the Change manager turns down the proposal. The change advisory board (CAB) may also request for revisions and improvements to be on the Requests for Change (RFC) documents or request for additional documents.

• Scheduling and prioritization

Here, the change advisory board reviews the resources needed to perform the changes compared to other changes and resource allocations. Then, they make the most optimal decision regarding the most appropriate resource allocations schedule and prioritize the proposed changes.

Challenges Facing the Change Advisory Board

• Some business leaders view the CAB in a bad light as they associate this board with approvals and denials that they may not be comfortable with. Therefore, they may place many obstacles and red tape to impede the success of the CAB.
   
• Oftentimes, firms fail to implement the recommendations of the CAB fully. It may be because they may lack enough resources needed to make the proposed changes a success. This renders the efforts and time used by the change advisory board futile.

Relevance Of the CAB In the Digital Age

Automation has significantly reduced the need for a CAB meeting to obtain change approvals. The role of the change has always been to provide insight into the suitability of proposed changes. However, it is essential to know that not every change was meant to go through the CAB. Therefore, in the current digital age, a process like risk management can simply be streamlined using analytics, a scoring system, metrics monitoring, and automating "low-level" changes.

This means that the CAB meetings can be held virtually only needing to convene when the CAB's members need to be given the regular strategic updates. Technology has made it less necessary for the change advisory board to review every proposal because firms rely more on frameworks like DevOps that help firms to produce more value through continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD).

Final Take Away

The change advisory board has always played a significant role in the seamless integration of changes into a firms' operations. Comprising members with impressive expertise in the fields of business and technology, it has been the "barometer" that guides as to whether proposed changes are right for the firm. However, technological advancements and increased automation of processes have diminished the importance of the change advisory board because of frameworks like agile and DevOps that boost a firm's value by raising efficiency!