Practices: change, delivery, control

The second half of the practices reference, following support and operations.

• Change enablement: maximize successful changes via risk assessment and authorization. A standard change is low-risk, pre-authorized, repeatable; a normal change is scheduled, assessed, formally authorized; an emergency change is implement-now.
• Deployment management: move new and changed components into controlled environments. Continuous integration means frequent merges with automated builds and tests, continuous delivery means always releasable, continuous deployment means auto-release on passing tests.
• Service level management: set business-based targets and monitor delivery against them. An SLA is a documented agreement on services and levels, and not a legal contract (exam trap); the service level is the metrics themselves.
• IT asset management: the full lifecycle of financially valuable IT assets. The IT asset register is the ownership, cost, and lifecycle database; discovery is automated inventory collection.
• Service configuration management: accurate info about configurations, where and when needed. A CI is any component managed to deliver a service; the CMDB is the configuration record store.
• Service continuity management: keep availability and performance sufficient through disaster. The BIA identifies Vital Business Functions and dependencies to set targets.
• Software development and management: apps that meet needs for functionality, reliability, maintainability, compliance. Technical debt is the rework backlog from short-term workarounds; know “definition of done.”

Change type triage is the reliable question: pre-authorized and repeatable is standard, needs a board and a schedule is normal, fix-it-now is emergency.