Change Management Plan

1. Introduction

Change Management is the process of managing changes to the Child Welfare Services-New System (CWS-NS) project, artifacts, application code, deliverables at a strategic, tactical, and operational level. The purpose of this Change Management Plan is to establish a standardized agile change management approach for the approval and tracking of proposed changes for the CWS-NS project.

1.1 Project Approach

In November 2015, the CWS-NS project changed its approach towards the procurement, design, development, and implementation of the new system from a waterfall methodology to an agile methodology. The primary reasons for moving towards an agile approach are to accelerate business value delivery to our constituents and to mitigate the significant risks that plague large, complex IT projects of the past. To align with Agile, change management processes were streamlined to accommodate the fluctuating nature of the service team sprints and to allow for a more efficient change control process that would not inhibit the natural flow of the sprint iterations. Authority is delegated to the service team level to allow for a grass-roots change control process.

CWDS Governance

This Change Management Plan, in conjunction with the CWDS Project Governance Plan defines the CWDS change request and change notification process and specifies the levels of authority required to approve changes. See Section 3.1 Hierarchy of Change Management Authorization. The Change Management vision is to execute change management at the lowest level of responsibility in the CWDS organization – at the service team level. This approach is in line with the agile methodology in making decisions at the lowest level possible or team level. A change is defined as an addition, modification, or removal of a configurable item that could have an effect on scope, budget or time. The type of change will necessitate the type of response. The scope of this plan covers changes during all agile stages (Planning and Analysis, Discovery, Alpha, Beta and Live). The priority of change requests are based on impact. Impact is defined as the level of benefit achieved if successfully implemented, or the level of negative impact to users or resources.

Priority Levels:

1. Critical: Work Stoppage or severe impact.
2. High: Work stoppage is imminent, need resolution.
3. Medium: Impact on productivity is expected; workaround has been identified and a solution is needed.
4. Low: Impact on productivity is low, solution is needed.

Screenshot of the tool:

2. Policies

Change Management must adhere to the following policies:

• The State is responsible for managing and enforcing the change management process.
• The Change Manager is the single point of contact for change requests to minimize the likelihood of conflicting changes and potential disruption to supported environments.
• The tracking of all changes to defined configuration items under the change control process will be recorded in the Change Request Log.
• All change requests should be assessed for their impact on scope, schedule, cost, quality, risk, resources, and customer satisfaction.
• Change Requests are closed by the Change Manager only upon verification that the change has been rejected or successfully completed.
• Success is defined as implementation of the change.
• The Change Management tool is a State-provided tool.

2.1 Document Maintenance

This document will be reviewed annually at minimum and updated as needed as the project proceeds. This document contains a revision history log. When changes occur, the version number will be updated to the next increment and the date, owner making the change, and change description will be recorded in the revision history log of the document.

2.2 Integrated Plans and Process

The Change Management Plan is closely integrated with the CWDS Configuration Management plan. The scope of the Configuration management plan states that configuration items require version control and change requests, whereas non-configurable items only require version control and a change notification. Section 4 below goes into more detail on both the CR and CN processes. The Change Management Plan approach is integrated with the Master Project Management Plan, CWS-NS Project Governance, Communication Management, Contract Management, Quality Management, Risk & Issue Management, Document Management, Schedule Management, Cost Management, and Requirements Management Plans.

3. Roles and Responsibilities

The Figure below is a table and diagram of the Change Management roles, responsibilities and authority. Responsibilities may be delegated, but delegation does not remove responsibility from the individual accountable for a specific action.

Roles and Responsibilities:

3.1 Change Control Board

The CCB (change control board) meets weekly to ensure change requests are carefully evaluated, analyzed, and assigned to the correct subject matter expert for further analysis and/or implementation. The CCB members consist of existing Legacy System Staff, Service Directors, PMO Manager, Security Lead, Technical Lead, Change Manager, Release Manager, County Representative, Procurement Manager, Policy Manager, and other CWDS staff as needed. The CCB will review open CR’s and evaluate new CR’s. The Change Manager will log all CCB decisions during each meeting.

4. Hierarchy of Change Management Authorization

Change Categories are identified in the black boxes in the below diagram

5. Change Management Process

Change requests are identified based on business, technical, and/or project need. For example, the origin of a change request may be due to environmental factors such as federal mandates, regulation changes, or technical issues. Regardless of the origin, all change requests must be evaluated and prioritized for impact to the business, system and/or project. The change management process flow for a change request and change notification is displayed below. In alignment with Agile, fewer changes are required to go through the formal change control process and are managed and communicated internally within the project in a more informal manner. At any time prior to approval, a change request can be rejected or sent back for further evaluation or assessment.

5.1 Change Type Response Times

5.2 Change Request Process

Change Request Process Steps

5.3 Change Notification Process:

Change Notification Process Steps:

5.4 Change Request Log

The Change Request Log is stored on the CWDS SharePoint site here. Compared to a complex PDF form, the CR log offers a simplified method of change management used for tracking and updating change requests. A custom view has been setup for ELT review of change requests. Items needing ELT review are marked “Yes” underneath the “Needs ELT Review” column.

5.5 Tracking a Change Request

Tracking must include collecting and tracking data for each change request. This may include, but is not limited to, the following types of data: Unique Tracking Number, Date of Request, Summary of Request, Status or disposition or the CR, Status Date, Person Assigned, Date Due, Date of Implementation, Change Origination, and Date of Closure.

5.6 Change Notification

All change notifications should be under a separate header within a blast message. Here is an example:

Stakeholder Feedback Update:

On Tuesday, CWDS began communicating to stakeholders that the CWDS Pivotal Tracker projects are publicly visible. To support that effort, the team developed communication material, a new CWDS web page, instructional text and videos, and a feedback form that allows stakeholders to provide feedback directly related to our Pivotal Tracker stories. If you are interested in seeing what we launched, visit the CWDS Stakeholder Feedback page.

Facilities and Business Services Update:

You may have noticed that some of our teams have moved office spaces. Procurement, Budget/Fiscal/Reporting moved out of Suite 210, making room for API, Intake, and Technology to move in. Please make sure to say hello to your new neighbors.

Change Notifications:

The Project Management Office updated the Schedule Management Plan on the CWDS Website.

Acronyms and Terms