Change Management

Change Management is the guiding process for how we prepare, equip and support our customers and employees throughout the phases of an implemented change. It provides an organized method for people to successfully move from their current ideology or methodology to their future ones as you have defined them.

QUICK START GUIDE

Change Requests

There is one main Change Management process flow used when creating Change Requests (CRs) in lower and upper environments.
Use CRs for application deployments to a Production environment and for infrastructure and environmental changes within the HCQIS environment.
- The majority of these infrastructure requests are initiated by the Infrastructure contractor.

Types of Change Requests:

Normal CRs

Normal CRs follow the same process as Parent CRs. They are intended more for organizations that do not follow a Lean-Agile software development process.

Example:

Change the XXX domain name from hcqis.org to cms.gov

Emergency CRs (ECR)

ECRs are used to resolve outages or for emergency deployments and require the same level of approvals as CRs.

Example:

Delete Duplicate Facilities

Other types of CRs:

For any other requests that are intended to make changes to any environment, the organization that is requesting the change will typically open the CR.

Examples:

Patching, upgrades, configuration changes (performance tuning, memory, account management, space increase, time out value, connections increase, etc..), restarts, security remediation, password updates, monitoring setup, decommissioning requests and break fixes.

For more detailed information on the Change Management Process please refer to the following link https://qnetconfluence.cms.gov/display/HIDS/Change+Management.

FAQs

General

What is Change Management?

Change Management is the guiding process for how we prepare, equip and support our customers and employees throughout the phases of an implemented change. It provides an organized method for people to successfully move from their current ideology or methodology to their future ones as you have defined them.

Who submits Parent/Child CRs and Normal CRs for deployments?

The individual submitting CRs depends on the environment type that is being targeted for the deployment:

QualityNet AWS environments: The Infrastructure contractor Release Management Team
Cloud Single Tenant environments: The ADO supporting the application and AWS instances

Cloud Multi-Tenant environments: The Infrastructure contractor Release Management Team

What is the most common use case for ADOs entering CRs?

Application deployments.

Are CRs required for all application deployment?

CRs are required for application deployment to a Production environment. For non-production deployments, CRs are not required, however they are highly recommended for tracking purposes.

Access

What are the requirements for requesting access?

All users requesting access to submit a Change Request must have access to ServiceNow. For instructions on the process or requesting a role for ServiceNow access, refer to the ServiceNow Welcome Packet.

A HARP account is required in order to access ServiceNow. If you do not yet have a HARP account or an EIDM or EUA account, register for a HARP ID. For instructions on the process, refer to the HARP Welcome Packet.

How do I access the Change Management Module?

Step 1: Log into ServiceNow at https://idm.cms.gov/ using your HARP credentials.

Step 2: Select ServiceNow after logging in.

Step 3: Locate Change Requests

Type “catalog” in the Filter Navigator
Select IT Services Catalog
Select Change Requests
Select one of the desired change types listed below:

Normal - Production

Normal - Non-Production (Lower Environments, Upper Environments except Production)

Emergency (Production, used to document a change that resolves an outage or a customer impacting issue)

Standard

Complete online form and select Submit.