DRAFT

Change & Version Control

Changes to production systems must be made in a manner so as to prevent unintended

consequences. Changes, which are not thoroughly exercised before deployment, may interfere
with the proper functioning of downstream modules. To prevent these inadvertent failures, a
system to verify, both the need for, and the successful remediation of problem areas, is mandatory.

Such a control system might be composed of several key steps. These are:

Recognition of deficiency
Establish severity of the problem
Obtain approval to proceed with investigatory efforts
Perform analysis in enough depth to fully and clearly define the solution
Determine the likely impact on other processes and systems should this proposed
change be accepted
Obtain approval to continue with pre-development efforts
Establish priority of the work in relation to all other outstanding issues
Secure funding as required
Place work on schedule
Define a testing regimen that will insure that the change(s) should accomplish the
needed correction / enhancement
Establish a detailed plan of the change(s) to be made
Conduct a review / walkthrough with peers and User Community where proposed
change(s) could have a significant impact on deployed modules, and / or business
processes of User Community
Obtain approval(s) from IT management and User Community to proceed with full-scale
development
Make change(s) to modules in development environment
Unit test effected modules in the development environment
When a separate test environment is available, move the modified modules there
Perform integration testing of the new work with the existing system(s) using sufficient
data to insure a complete exercise of all cases likely to be encountered in normal
processing
Be prepared to have the system account for, and handle all exceptions

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On mission critical systems, conduct regression testing with expanded data set to
increase the confidence level that change(s) actually accomplish all requirements, and
that a high percentage of low probability scenarios will not inflict future failures,
Review test results with those charged with the approval process
Obtain concurrence from management and User Community that all objectives have
been satisfied
Submit work to be moved into the production environment once all necessary
clearances have been obtained
Record changes in the central document repository, fully enumerating modifications
made, testing results, and approvals

The adoption of every step of this procedure need not be necessary for every proposed change,
but should be used as a model instead. The rigidity of accomplishing each of these steps, must be
tempered by the degree of modifications anticipated. The potential for impact on the deployed
systems, or the underlying business processes, will also influence how much of this idealized
procedure is adopted each time. The more significant the proposed changes to be made, the
greater the adherence to these steps. Other steps giving greater visibility to management or to the
User Community might be adopted on a case-by-case basis when a project with a high impact
factor is contemplated.

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