The following are best practices as they pertain to change management in an Exchange environment:

• Define, document, and implement a process by which changes to the messaging system are assessed for their impact on the entire infrastructure and prioritized accordingly. Consider:
• Impact on SLA.
• Impact on capacity
• Impact on security.
• Impact on disaster recovery procedures.
• Develop a standard set of change priorities, and ensure that only valid categories are assigned to RFCs. A standard prioritization system will improve understanding of the impact the change may have on the infrastructure, and will ensure that appropriate time is spend validating, assessing, and testing the change.
• Consider introducing more stringent approval procedures for complex changes or for those that require major resources. These changes will have to be tested in the lab using load-testing tools as appropriate.
• Remember that some minor changes may be pre-approved as standard changes when they follow an established path and their impact is minor. Different process models will be used for each type of change to reflect the different procedures.
• Consider fast-tracking emergency changes. Therefore, the entire process will need to be streamlined to ensure that all the major steps are completed more quickly than for a non-emergency change.
• Improve the procedures for the authorization of all changes by the relevant IT and business staff. This is important because it ensures that each change has build, test, and implementation, and back-out plans. Only after a complete assessment should the change be authorized and allowed to progress.
• Using information relating to service hours, business critical times and processing times, ensure that changes are implemented at a time of minimal impact and disruption to the business.
• Publish a forward schedule of changes and ensure that all staff members have access to it. This provides a high-level of view forthcoming changes, which will be particularly useful to the service desk staff and change initiators.
• Implement a process that ensures that all changes are tested by an independent team. This will ensure that someone other than the person who built it reviews each change objectively.
• Ensure that each change has an appropriate back-out plan. This will prevent disruption to the users in the event of a change failure, by ensuring a swift restoration of service.
• Implement a post-implementation review process for changes. This will ensure that lessons are learned from the implementation of changes and that weaknesses are addressed through a program of continuous improvement.
• Consider that if the change management process is being circumvented, this will undermine the perceived effectiveness of the process. Mount a campaign to improve the awareness of the process, and ensure that senior management has approved the process. Ensure that senior management demonstrates commitment to the process and that corrective measures are in place should individuals circumvent the process.
• When performing change management, use a tool to log all changes and to record the status of each change. This provides a valuable resource to other service areas within the organization, such as the service desk, incident management, and problem management. Ideally, the tool should be fully integrated with all of the service areas within the organization because this will provide a single reference point for staff.