I have a big question. Please take into account the following scenario: You have to develop new software because the business is requiring new functionalities. According to this you submit and RFC in order to proceed. What happens after the RFC is approved? Which of these options is correct? Or none of them?

1. You send this new development to the Program Management Office (PMO) office, and the Change Manager “supervises” the development (understanding this as review deadlines and related staff, but not the job of the Project Manager) or..
2. You send this RFC to the Release Manager in order to create a Release Plan that must be coherent with the Project Plan of the Project Manager, and after that is “supervising” responsibility assigned to the Release Manager?

Jorge

Hi Jorge,

You ask a very good question about an area that is very confusing. The “expert” answer to your question is “depends.” The ITIL offers very little guidance on how the Change Management process works with Program/Project Management “functions” (specific organizations with the responsibility for the management of programs or projects). So, a little reading between the lines is required.

While neither of your options is entirely correct, Option 1 is the closest. Let me explain.

The Change Manager is responsible for the execution of the Change Management process. The RFC in this case would be received, filtered, accepted (if it met the criteria for a change), prioritized and categorized. At this point, if the RFC is a significant change, the Change Manager would route it to the Change Advisory Board (CAB). The CAB is responsible for doing an impact assessment of the change, and looking at the scheduling and resource constraints associated with the RFC. The CAB makes its recommendation to the Change Manager and if appropriate the Change Manager would issue an authorization to build to the functional group or groups that will be involved in building the change.

Now the “depends” comes in at two points. First, depending on the composition of your CAB, the PMO would normally be represented on the CAB along with other stakeholders in this change, including the functional groups that will be ultimately involved in building the change. This enables their involvement in case there are any program or project initiation activities that need be kicked off or information gathered. The second “depends” is the authorization to build. When this occurs, the actual building of the change is under the functional control of the technical functional groups involved. The involvement of the PMO then is based on the criteria established for its oversight of the build. Often, this is based on level of resources and or cost.

Irrespective of the PMO’s involvement, the change builder provides the Change Manager with status updates through the build lifecycle. As you pointed out in your Option 1, the Change Manager’s role is NOT one of the Project Manager.

I hope this solves your problem -- David Nichols