By: Terri Hurley | Updated: 2024-10-25 | Comments | Related: More > Database Administration
Problem
Have you heard the term 'CAB meetings' floating around within Change Management discussions? Not sure what that means? Let's talk about what Change Management (CAB) meetings are and their purpose.
Solution
What Does CAB Mean?
CAB stands for Change Advisory Board, and it not only approves Change Request tickets within IT. It also helps with assessing, prioritizing, and mitigating risk for a company. It's usually made up of IT and business representatives that could include change managers, users, managers, product owners, technical experts, and customers.
A CAB's purpose is to deliver support to a Change Management team by advising on requested changes. Basically, the CAB is responsible for the oversight of all changes in the production environment. As such, it reviews requests coming in from management, customers, users, and other IT groups or individuals. Production change requests may include hardware and software updates, configuration settings, patches, etc. Also, those changes may be standard scheduled changes, but they could also involve emergency changes.
Who Attends CAB Meetings?
A CAB meeting will be held by Change Management along with Project Managers. A representative from each Stakeholder group, including the DBAs, will meet to discuss upcoming Change Requests. If any member or group has a concern or question about the change details, they can speak up at the CAB meeting. The CAB board will review the proposed Change Request details and approve or deny the request. Once Change Management CAB members approve production changes, they typically update a global calendar to track all scheduled changes. This calendar is available to all Stakeholders so they can see when approved changes are scheduled, along with the start and end times of the changes.
This global calendar may also include blacked-out dates in advance, noting on the calendar when production changes are prohibited. Some companies do not allow production changes during the week, or some may not allow changes during the last week of the month. This will become the master calendar of all approved Change Requests. If anyone wants to schedule a Production change, they can refer to this calendar to see what dates are available.
Another important item to mention is the necessity to include the Helpdesk. Typically, the Helpdesk isn't asked to be involved with the Change Request. However, they are the first group to be contacted by the users when an application goes down. So reasonably, they should be included in the CAB meetings. They may not participate much in the discussions, but they will be present to take notes when a major change is being discussed. If they are not invited to attend the CAB meetings, they should be included on email notices of approved scheduled changes.
Failure to notify them in advance of scheduled changes will likely cause frustration for both Helpdesk staff and, most importantly, the clients, should issues arise. So, communication between the Helpdesk and the client is very important during the implementation of a production change.
Project Managers Role
A Project Manager's role is to assist with the implementation of those production changes by managing the overall project or task. Most production changes are usually scheduled by Change Management along with Project Managers. Also, some change requests are not managed by a Project Manager but are requested by an individual or group.
However, most Change Requests should be sent to Change Management to be reviewed in a CAB meeting. So, if anyone has any questions or concerns, they can be addressed. The only changes not sent to the CAB are ones that are preapproved for ongoing scheduled changes. An example of a preapproved request could be monthly scheduled system updates such as Server reboots or patching. Another type of request that doesn't require a scheduled Change Request is an Emergency request.
What are ECAB Meetings?
The ECAB represents the Emergency Change Advisory Board, and they only handle emergency requests. It is typically a smaller group of people who are authorized to make quick decisions and can take immediate action to address an emergency request. The ECAB works quickly and sometimes, when necessary, waives the testing processes and instead makes on-the-fly decisions. When the ECAB reviews emergency requests, they consider the trade-off between the risk and reward of approving that request.
In some small to mid-size companies, a single CAB group may be responsible for approving both Standard and Emergency tickets. But in larger organizations, there may be two CABs set up where the CAB reviews Standard tickets and the other ECAB only reviews Emergency tickets.
Emergency Tickets vs. Standard Tickets
Once a Standard Change ticket is approved by the CAB, changes can be installed on its scheduled date. However, if it's an Emergency ticket, they are reviewed and approved by the ECAB but are expedited and reviewed for immediate implementation. The ECAB will let you know when the Emergency request is approved and when you can start your implementation. Do not start the Emergency request until the ECAB has approved your request.
Summary
Now that you understand the responsibilities of Change Management CAB and ECAB groups and who's involved, you should be confident in implementing your production change. Remember: Communication with all appropriate groups is essential to ensuring success. If you have any questions, you should contact your Change Management representative, who can provide specific guidance that fits your organization.
Next Steps
- Review my article Database Change Management and Separation of Duties Guide for an explanation of what Change Management is in detail.
- Review my article What is Change Management and the SQL Server DBAs Role for an understanding of the DBAs role within Change Management.
About the author
Terri Hurley is a Sr. SQL DBA with over 20 years of extensive database administration experience.This author pledges the content of this article is based on professional experience and not AI generated.
View all my tips
Article Last Updated: 2024-10-25
