Change Approval Process - Vocabulary and Classifications
Certain changes may require approvals at specific phases in the process. Approvals are tied to both the TYPE and IMPACT of a given change.
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* Standard - Standard changes are changes for which the content of the change is already known to be good (e.g., installing Microsoft patches that have been released via MIT WAUS on a specific system), but the exact timing of the change is subject to approval. Changes of this type will generate an approval request as part of the implementation phase of the change process.
* Normal - Normal changes are changes for which both the content and the timing of the change are subject to review. Changes of this type will generate an approval request as part of both the initial request and the implementation phase of the change.
* Emergency - Emergency changes are those that are made in response to disruptions in production services and are required to restore service, or otherwise under duress. Given the need for expediency, these changes have no approval during implementation, but are subject to an approval as part of the close out process, to confirm that the change is sound and doesn't need to be revisited or revised once time is no longer of the essence.
Some examples that may help when trying to decide what type to assign to a specific change:
No Impact - Provisioning a new VM.
Standard - Deploying pre-approved security patches (WAUS, Ksplice, etc.)
Normal - Decommissioning a production system.
Emergency - Allocating additional resources to a production system to mitigate a load spike.
To whom approvals are routed is based on the assigned IMPACT of the change. Remedy categorizes impacts on a scale from 1-4, with 1 being the highest:
1 (Extensive / Widespread) - Changes of this impact will require approval at the Team Leader, Sr. Manager, and Associate Director level. This would be an appropriate impact level for changes that will directly impact the functionality of more than one major enterprise applications and/or disrupt the operation of an entire data center.
2 (Significant / Large) - Changes of this impact will require approval at the Team Leader and Sr. Manager level. This would be an appropriate impact level for changes with the potential to affect a major enterprise application or involves modifications to all managed systems.
3 (Moderate / Limited) - Changes of this impact will require approval at the Team Leader level. This would be an appropriate impact level for many day-to-day changes, and is a reasonable default if you're unsure of how to categorize a change.
4 (Minor / Localized) - Changes of this impact will require no approval / self-approval. This would be an appropriate change level for most departmental servers and/or development environments.
Change approvals are sequenced, e.g., impact level 2 changes require approval from both a team leader and manager; the approval request will not be sent to the relevant manager until after the team leader has approved the change.
Approving Changes
Team leaders and managers who need to approve changes will receive an email notification upon receipt of a new request for approval. They may approve changes in one of three ways:
Via the Remedy Web Interface - To access the list of pending approvals, log into Remedy and visit the "Approval Central" screen by selecting "Quick Links" -> "Approval Central" from the slide-out menu on the left hand side of the screen. Select the change you wish to approve and select "Approve", "Reject", or "Hold" as appropriate from the action bar at the top of the list. Screen shot of Approval Central screen: 
Via the iPhone / Android Mobile Application - iPhone users may download the "BMC Requests" application from the App Store; Android users may download the application from the Android Marketplace. To use this application, you'll need to have a local Remedy password assigned; the application does not support single sign-on. The relevant mobile server for each application tier is:
mit-dev-m.onbmc.com - DEV environment
mit-qa-m.onbmc.com - QA environment
mit-m.onbmc.com - PROD environment
Via Email - Documentation forthcoming.