Change control process

September 2020

Document information

Summary information

This document has been produced to outline the process for making any changes to the telephone system, especially those that affect functionality, performance and reporting. This document is intended to be used for changes to any telephone service using the KCOM platform, this will include changes we are able to make or where changes are to be escalated to KCOM.

Glossary

Adviceline Change Advisory Board (Adviceline CAB):

Senior Operations Manager (Lee Brooks)

Operations Team Leader (Mark Bateson)

Principle Data Manager (Pete Watson)

Senior Data Analyst (Sarah Chang)

Telephony Product Lead (Duncan Baldwin)

Telephony Business Analyst (Sundip Sanger)

RFC

Request for change

Service request

Overview

This document has been designed to outline the process for any changes to be made to the telephone system. This document is intended to be used alongside a service request on Freshservice for changes to any telephone service using the KCOM platform, this will include changes we are able to make or where changes are to be escalated to KCOM.

Types of change

All changes to the KCOM system will be captured in the change control process.

Standard changes are those that are routine and deemed to have little or no risk associated with them such as adding or removing agents. These changes are recorded in a systematic way, using service requests on Freshservice and do not need to be reviewed by the Adviceline CAB.

Emergency changes are those that represent a crisis or an opportunity that must be addressed. Approval may be required from senior stakeholders if the change requires budgetary sign-off but approval from the data team is not required when implementing an emergency change.

Normal changes by definition, are those that are not emergency or standard changes. These changes need to be evaluated, approved and scheduled.

Low-risk changes and those that do not require additional funding can be approved within the Adviceline CAB.
Changes that require additional funding need to be approved by senior management/the executive board.

Normal Change RFC activities

A request for Normal change is initiated using this service request.

When the SR is completed, a ticket is created in the group “Adviceline changes” A group is can be compared to a shared email inbox, members of the Adviceline CAB will receive a link to the new ticket by email.

Once logged in to Freshservice, the ticket needs to be assigned to a member of the Operations team or a member of the Data team if the request is reporting related.

Any RFC marked “Urgent” is immediately reviewed by the Operations team and follows the Emergency change process.

All other RFCs are to be evaluated prior to the weekly Change & Prioritisation meeting.

Considerations during the evaluation of the request include but are not limited to:
1. Risks of making the change vs. not making the change
2. Reporting needs and the effect on existing reports e.g. new values to report on/ignore in the CDR file
3. Assessment of cost/resources needed to implement the change
4. If the change is inconsistent with the standard Adviceline operating model it should be highlighted
5. Stakeholders that need to be made aware of the change

The Adviceline CAB can request more information from the requester by emailing them through Freshservice. The team will make a decision in principle to accept or reject the change during this meeting if possible. In some cases, Kcom will need to be consulted before a decision is made.

The assigned agent will contact the requester informing them of the decision in principle with reasons to support the decision. In addition, if there are Kcom charges involved, the requester will be made aware of them at this stage so that they can initiate the funding sub-process.

To record the agreed outcome against the ticket, approval requests will be sent to the approvers by the agent (member of the Adviceline CAB) assigned to the ticket.

A list of approvers can be found in the knowledge base.

Approvers will receive an email asking them to approve or reject the change request.

If the approvals and funding (if required) have been received, the request is added to the Telephony changes Trello board.

During the weekly change/prioritisation meeting, the changes in the backlog will be prioritised.

The change request is tracked on the Trello board until it’s completed. The request will pass through the following stages:
1. Requested/Inbox
2. Assessment/backlog
3. Review/approval
4. Build
5. Test
6. Implementation
7. Comms
8. Completed

Changes are always made in the test environment and fully tested before being implemented in production. Testing includes
1. User acceptance testing
2. System integration testing

Communicating change once implemented is done using the following Workplace groups:
1. Using data at Citizens Advice
2. Adviceline phone system support group

Normal change process map

Evaluating the RFC

The details of the request are contained in the top half of the SR, under “Requested items”.

Click on the three dots and click “Edit” to view and edit the SR.
You will notice that there some of the fields have not been completed, these fields are not visible to the requester, they are for the Adviceline CAB to complete.
Once the request has been evaluated and the fields have been completed, click on the “Update” button to save the changes.

Emergency changes

When an urgent request is received, the Operations team immediately check the ticket and confirm that the request is a system fault or failure. Emergency changes can be implemented without prior approval from the rest of the Adviceline CAB.

Emergency change process map