What is Change Management?
Change Management is the process that ensures controlled, safe and documented changes to systems, applications, infrastructure or processes.
The goal is to deliver changes without unwanted disruption, errors or risk to the organisation.
Change Management is a core process within ITIL, ISMS, GxP and IEC 62443, and is essential in both IT and OT.
🎯 Purpose of Change Management
- Managing risk during changes
- Preventing unplanned downtime or incidents
- Aligning departments (IT, OT, production, security)
- Recording decisions, approvals and tests
- Compliance with standards such as ISO 27001, GMP and NIS2
🔁 Types of Changes
| Type | Description |
|---|---|
| Standard Change | Common, low-risk change with a pre-approved procedure |
| Normal Change | Change with an approval procedure, including impact and risk assessment |
| Emergency Change | Urgent change, e.g. for an outage or security incident |
📄 Change Management process (steps)
- Request (RFC) — Request for Change is submitted
- Classification — Determine type, impact, risk and urgency
- Assessment and approval — By the Change Advisory Board (CAB) or authorised individuals
- Preparation and testing — Carried out in a test environment or simulation
- Implementation — Per plan, with a back-out plan in place
- Evaluation and closure — Verification, documentation, lessons learned
🔐 Change Management in OT environments
In industrial environments, additional considerations apply:
- Verification of safety (SIL, SIS, HMI interfaces)
- Validation per GMP or 21 CFR Part 11
- Impact on production or real-time processes
- Assessment by OT experts and IT/Security
- Back-out procedure for failures or hazards
📊 Change Management vs. MOC (Management of Change)
| Change Management | MOC |
|---|---|
| Focused on IT/OT changes | Focused on process, plant or safety changes |
| Often managed via ITIL | Often managed via HSE or engineering |
| Formal but IT-oriented | Often part of HAZOP or LOPA |
Collaboration is essential where domains overlap!
✅ Benefits of Change Management
- Greater system stability and fewer outages
- Transparency and traceability of changes
- Lower risk during updates or patches
- Faster audit preparation and compliance
- Better collaboration between IT, OT, security and production
📌 In summary
Change Management helps organisations deliver changes in a controlled, safe way, with minimal risk and maximum transparency — essential for reliable production and IT services.