What are changes?

A change is the addition, modification, or removal of anything that could have a direct or indirect effect on services.

There are three types of changes:

• Standard changes - these are low-risk, pre-authorized changes that are well understood and fully documented, and can be implemented without needing additional review.

• Normal changes - these are changes that need to be scheduled, assessed and reviewed following a process. The initiation of a normal change is triggered by the creation of a change request. Organizations that have an automated pipeline for continuous integration and continuous deployment often automate most of the steps of the change control process.

• Emergency changes - those changes that must be implemented as soon as possible; to resolve an incident, roll back a deployment or implement a security patch. The process for assessment and authorization is fast-tracked to ensure they can be implemented quickly. Emergency changes should be subject to the same testing, assessment, and authorization as normal changes, but sometimes it will be necessary to implement the change with less testing due to time constraints.