Planning a Change Advisory Board Meeting

Planning a Change Advisory Board Meeting

The CAB (Change Advisory Board) is probably the single most important meeting in the world of service management. Certainly for those concerned with reducing the risks of transition and just simply keeping the lights on from day to day within the IT department.

Estimates have been made by organisations such as Gartner that somewhere in excess of 60% of all your incidents can be traced to poorly implemented changes, some claim the figure is higher, some claim its lower.  Whatever the true figure is there is no doubt that uncontrolled changes hurt.  A lot!

It’s common practice within an IT department to introduce a change freeze when the business is in a particularly important or volatile period in order to reduce the likelihood of business affecting IT issues occurring.

There is little doubt that the management of change is of extreme importance to a successful IT department.  If this is the case then surely the most visible part of this critical process is the Change Advisory Board where the important changes for the period are discussed.

So, if this meeting is so critical, why do so many technical personnel dread it? I have heard it referred to as the weekly torture session, or nap time.

Does this sound familiar to anyone?

  • CAB meetings devolve every time into detailed technical discussions between one or two engineers while everyone else in the room looks on, bored, as they have no need to comment on the change in question.
  • Changes were brought into the meeting at the last minute as the engineer ‘forgot the raise the paperwork’ in time, but could you approve it ‘just this once? Again and again?
  • No business focus on the changes, leading to changes being approved on the nod, which turn out to have a major customer impact.
  • Actions being assigned to technicians and then hoping that they were carried out before the change goes live.
  • The CAB meeting drags on and on as minor changes to update a patch on test server are discussed in the same level of detail as next months data centre move.

I believe that the root causes of the issue can be traced to these areas

  1. ITIL states that having a CAB is a good idea, but does not go into detail about exactly how it should be run.
  2. There are certain basic skills that are needed to be able to chair a meeting and ITIL does not address these (why should it? That’s part of management, not part of IT Service Management
  3. A CAB is not a point in time exercise and requires prep work and follow up work after it happens.

So to all those who are suffering from the pain of an unfocused, rambling, tech-heavy CAB I offer the following advice.

CAB is a meeting, treat it like such!

A formal meeting should not be a collection of whoever happens to be available asking ‘So what are we talking about this week?’  There are some basic rules you should put in place.

  • Have an agenda to guide the topics for discussion to set expectations. This goes beyond the ‘What changes will we discuss this week’ and into other areas such as ongoing projects, planned releases etc
  • Make sure the chair of the meeting knows how to guide conversations.  It’s their role to make sure the topics discussed are productive and to the point.  If the conversation keeps defaulting back to in-depth technical discussions then the Change Manager (as chair) is required to bring it back on topic.  Don’t be afraid to ask attendees who have an obvious issue to pick it up outside the CAB. If there is something that worries with a Change request that it needs that level of technical discussion in an approval meeting then it’s not ready for approval yet.
  • Make a clear statement about which change you’re reviewing during the meeting.  Guide discussion on it, and then ask, in a loud clear voice “Is change1234 approved or not?”  Don’t just segue from one change into another one without clearly stating if it was approved or not.
  • Make sure someone is taking minutes, and be doubly sure to capture any actions assigned to attendees, as well as when they are due by.

CAB meetings require prep work and follow up work

CAB meetings don’t just occur in a vacuum.  There is considerable prep work, and follow up work, for all parties and not just the Change Manager.

I find that establishing expectations of the meeting, as well as scheduled timelines so that everyone knows what will happen and by when help a lot.

CAB Diagram

CAB meetings are one of the most valuable meetings in the whole of Service Management, but they don’t happen by magic.  Putting a little effort into defining how your organisation wants them to occur will pay off huge dividends in a short period of time.

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