Summary: A post with an ITIL glossary.
Date: Around 2019
Refactor: 2 January 2025: Checked links and formatting.
A change advisory board (CAB) delivers support to a change management team by approving requested changes and assisting in the assessment and prioritization of changes. This body is generally made up of IT and Business representatives that include: a change manager, user managers and groups, technical experts, possible third parties and customers (if required).
The CAB members should selectively be chosen to ensure that the requested changes are thoroughly checked and assessed from both a technical and business perspective. The considered change will dictate the required personnel to convene in a CAB meeting. These entities are not required to meet face-to-face on each requested change, but rather use electronic support and communication tools as a medium. It is however advised that a quarterly meeting is scheduled to review outstanding changes, sign-off on approved changes and discuss any future major changes.
A CAB offers multiple perspectives necessary to ensure proper decision-making. For example, a decision made solely by IT may fail to recognize the concerns of accounting. The CAB is tasked with reviewing and prioritizing requested changes, monitoring the change process and providing managerial feedback.
A CAB is an integral part of a defined change management process designed to balance the need for change with the need to minimize inherent risks. For example, the CAB is responsible for oversight of all changes in the production environment. As such, it has requests coming in from management, customers, users and IT. Plus the changes may involve hardware, software, configuration settings, patches, etc.
This is defined as part of the change control process within ITIL.
The addition, modification or removal of approved, supported or baselined hardware, network software, application environment, system, desktop build or associated documentation.
Process of controlling Changes to the infrastructure or any aspect of services, in a controlled manner enabling approved Changes with minimum disruption.
Component of an infrastructure – or an item, such as a Request for Change, associated with an infrastructure – which is (or is to be) under the control of Configuration Management. CIs may vary widely in complexity, size and type – from an entire system (including all hardware, software and documentation) to a single module or a minor hardware component.
The process of identifying and defining the Configuration Items in a system, recording and reporting the status of configuration Items and Requests for Change, and verifying the completeness and correctness of configuration items.
A database which contains all relevant details of each CI and details of the important relationships between CIs.
Any event which is not part of the standard operation of a service and which causes, or may cause, an interruption to or a reduction in, the quality of that service.
Unknown underlying cause of one or more Incidents