Change Management Vocabulary Exercises

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A change record states: "The change request has been approved by the CAB."

What is a CAB in IT change management?

The Change Advisory Board (CAB) is an ITIL construct: a cross-functional group (IT operations, business, security, architects) that reviews the risk, impact, rollback plan, and scheduling of normal and major changes before authorising them.

Change type	CAB required?	Description
Standard change	No — pre-approved	Low-risk, routine, well-documented procedure
Normal change	Yes — full CAB review	Non-routine change, scheduled through the change process
Emergency change	ECAB — reduced group	Critical production fix, expedited approval process

Key vocabulary: RFC (Request For Change), change record, CAB approval.

2 / 5

A new engineer asks about the difference between change types in the ITIL process.

What is an "emergency change" in ITIL change management, and how does it differ from a "standard change"?

Both standard and emergency changes bypass full CAB review, but for different reasons: standard changes are pre-approved because they are routine and low-risk; emergency changes are expedited because a production incident demands it.

Concept	Standard change	Emergency change
Why expedited	Pre-approved — known low risk, documented procedure	Critical production incident — time-sensitive
Approval body	None required — pre-authorised	ECAB (Emergency CAB) — smaller, faster group
Example	Routine monthly patch deployment	P1 incident hotfix outside maintenance window

3 / 5

An operations manager says: "The team is operating under a change freeze from 15 December to 5 January."

What does a change freeze mean for deployments?

A change freeze (or change moratorium) is a temporary suspension of all non-emergency changes. Production is considered too risky to change during peak business periods. Emergency changes can still be approved via ECAB with justification.

Term	Meaning
change moratorium	Temporary halt on all non-emergency production changes
freeze window	The specific date range during which the freeze applies
emergency change exception	A critical change approved during a freeze to resolve a production incident
freeze communication	Notifying all teams of the freeze dates and exception process well in advance

4 / 5

A change manager rejects a change record saying: "The rollback plan is insufficient."

What must a rollback plan include to be considered complete in an ITIL change record?

A rollback plan must be: specific (exact commands/steps, not "restore from backup"), accountable (named owner), timely (maximum rollback window defined), and verifiable (success criteria stated).

Component	Requirement
Backout procedure	Numbered step-by-step instructions with exact commands
Rollback owner	A named engineer responsible for executing the rollback
RTO for rollback	Maximum acceptable time to complete the rollback (e.g. ≤15 minutes)
Rollback success criteria	Observable evidence that the rollback completed successfully

5 / 5

A change item reads: "Post-implementation review (PIR) for this change is scheduled 48 hours after deployment."

What is the purpose of a PIR in change management?

The Post-Implementation Review (PIR) closes the feedback loop. Questions addressed: did the change achieve its stated objective? Were there unexpected impacts? What should be improved in the change process? Results feed change management KPIs.

PIR topic	Question addressed
Objective achievement	Did the change accomplish what the RFC stated?
Unexpected impacts	Did the change cause any unintended side effects?
Lessons learned	What can be improved in the change procedure next time?
Change quality KPI	Change success rate, unplanned changes ratio — fed by PIR outcomes