iWise Change Management

It is extremely difficult to describe a work of art in words rather than pictures. iWise software is a "see" rather than a "what." But we will do our best to describe it in both words and images. Below is a summary of iWise Change Management.

iWise Change Management assists personnel in managing the change process. It records, tracks, and schedules changes associated with data processing hardware, software, voice and data networks, and procedures. However, scheduling and recording changes are only part of the change management process. iWise Change Management allows you to quickly and easily identify the effects of changes, including relationships with problems, quality assurance, configuration, and other important service management functions.

The key objectives of iWise Change Management are to:

• Provide an easy method to schedule changes for data processing hardware, software, networks, service, and other support processes
• Decrease the paperwork required to track and manage change information
• Provide a support base that can be dynamically adapted to changing environments
• Provide an e-mail interface that allows change notification and change approval/rejection; change notification may also be completed by fax, pager, etc.
• Ensure that significant, major, and high-risk changes do not conflict
• Ensure changes do not impact Service Level Agreements (SLAs) in place for applications, systems, and configuration items (CIs)
• Inform users of scheduled down time for applications, systems, services, etc.
• Provide a method to implement back-out plans and emergency recovery procedures
• Provide a means to relate changes to incidents, requests, configuration items (CIs), and a product availability

iWise Change Management is one of a series of applications designed with a global view of the service management arena. At the same time, it may be used singularly to manage the change process. This is made possible by the powerful relational database capability provided by iWise. Change Management takes advantage of this capability in numerous ways, including automating time-consuming and error-prone tasks. In fact, the major emphasis of iWise Change Management is automation - without threatening the integrity and purpose of the change management process.

From a global viewpoint, iWise Change Management automates interfaces with incident, configuration, and general product availability. You can automatically: create a change from an incident, check the effect of a change on the overall network, and determine if a schedule conflict exists with other changes or scheduled product availability.

iWise Change Management automatically adds re-schedule counts, creates date/time stamps for overnight or weekend reporting, and builds change descriptions from key change management attributes. It automatically notifies involved parties via the group responsible for entering the change, and performs any additional notifications identified in the record of the product to be changed.

For library or move control, iWise Change Management provides an interface to automatically add change information from an external source. The types and frequency of this activity are user-defined. From a change management viewpoint, the input data format may be a sequential file, with defined offsets and attribute lengths.

These are just a few of the processes automated within iWise Change Management. Its objective is to accelerate the process of change management whenever possible, and allow your organization to define this process using tables, configuration, and product objects. The result is an efficient, streamlined, and flexible change management process that grows in its capability as other enterprise or service management processes are implemented.

Most changes are concerned with products or configuration items such as applications, program modules, devices, system software, etc. Due to the diverse number of vendors, products, and product versions, identifying the actual component being changed can be difficult. Change Management uses iWise CMDB, which gives each product and configuration item (CI) a unique identity to assist in this identification process.

Creating and Using Vendor Calls

A vendor call is a Change Management child object used to schedule a visit or call by an external vendor. A separate authorization is required to access vendor calls, and only the group that owns a change can enter a vendor call for that change.