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Set up strong change request procedures

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Does your organization have defined change request procedures? Do you think this documentation is necessary? Do you agree with Mike Talon that the lack of such procedures can damage your disaster recovery plan? Share your comments about establishing strong change request procedures, as discussed in the Oct. 14 e-newsletter.

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Topic

maintenance vs. repair change control

In reply to Set up strong change request procedures

Strong change control procedures are great, especially for organizations with multiple data centers. But they can only reasonable be required for planned changes (maintenance and upgrades) not for troubleshooting a production failure. In the case of an unplanned failure the primary concern is getting things running again and there will be no time for pre-approval. You’ll have to rely on a post mortem discussion to let everyone know what changes were made after the fact.
This approach opens a loophole to subvert the system. I have seen cases where it was difficult to schedule a maintenance period so techs just wait for the next unplanned failure and do all their maintenance work as part of the repair, without having to get all the approvals.

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