Change Control Checklist

Audience: Administrators

Date: March 1, 2004

The attached checklist is a guide to assist "change control". "Change control" is a systems management discipline whose purpose is to minimize risks associated with change. Changes that involve risk include adding hardware, software, patches, updates, tuning, customization, etc. The risks can be significant because today's systems are more complex and often run business critical applications. A small change can result in unintended results, such as degraded performance, function, availability or loss of data. Planning and testing are crucial to minimizing this risk.

Feel free to adjust the change control checklist as appropriate to your systems Service Level Agreement. "High risk/high impact" systems require more planning and testing than "low risk/low impact" systems. Use as a starting point.

change_control_checklist.doc