University Of Houston System
Implementing Changes
To The PeopleSoft Production Environment

Communication and coordination of hardware, software, and network changes is essential in providing a stable PeopleSoft production environment. Because of multiple components, multiple applications, and various technical entities; an organized effort is essential to minimize the likelihood of disruption, unauthorized alterations, and errors. This business requirement is enabled by a management process that provides for the analysis, implementation, and follow-up of all changes requested and made to the production environment. The change management process takes into consideration:

a) Change identification
b) Categorization, prioritization, and emergency procedures
c) Impact assessment
d) Change authorization
e) Release authorization, and
f) Software distribution
g) timely communication to functional and technical communities of scheduled changes

Mission Statement:
The mission of the Change Management Committee is to facilitate a high level of communication among Production support teams by coordinating the scheduling of all changes to the PeopleSoft production environment with minimal disruption to the users. Those changes involve infrastructure, hardware, software, and application installs or upgrades that are deemed necessary for safeguarding the data, keeping the environment up-to-date and ensuring that all components are working properly. For audit trail purposes, the CMC will be responsible for documenting the changes to the production environment over time and maintaining the UHS Release Planning Schedule. The committee does not function as an approval authority over changes but as a scheduling/communications coordinator.

Organizational Structure:
Members:
The Change Management Committee consists of representatives from all technical groups from all components providing support for the PeopleSoft production environment. In addition to the technical community, the committee shall include FAST project functional leads.

Facilitator: The Change Management Committee shall appoint a member of the committee to serve as facilitator of the committee. Responsibilities and duties as facilitator include

• Chair and facilitate the committee meetings
• Appoint a member of the committee to serve during their absence.
• Appoint a member of the committee to serve as secretary during the secretary's absence.

Secretary: The Change Management Committee shall appoint a member of the committee to serve as secretary. Responsibilities and duties of the secretary include

• Record, distribute, and file minutes for each committee meeting.
• Serve as keeper of records for all change notifications.
• Assign and post the change number to change notification forms presented during the meeting.
• Shall make records of change notifications available upon request.

Release Planner: The Change Management Committee shall appoint a member of the committee to serve as the release planner. Responsibilities of the release planner include

• Record, distribute, and post the release planning document on the web.
• Serve as keeper of records for all release planning documents.
• Assign the release number and post on the change notification form.
• Shall make records of release planning documents available upon request.

Implementation Procedures:
The following procedures should be adhered to whenever implementing a change to the PeopleSoft production environment.

The Change Notification Form can be located on the FAST web page at
http://www.uh.edu/fast/FAST-technical.htm

A Change Notification Form should be completed and presented to the Change Management Committee by the technical group which will be implementing the change.

• Changes to server hardware or operating systems should be presented by the manager of IT Enterprise Computing Systems (ECS. )
• Changes to Oracle dbms or database maintenance should be presented by the manager of IT Enterprise Systems Technical Support Services (ES-TSS).
• Changes to WAN should be presented by manager of IT Network Planning and Development Group (NPDG).
• Changes to LAN should be presented by local campus technical staff.
• Changes to PeopleSoft applications, both internal and external objects, or accessing table data; should be presented by the IT ES technical managers on behalf of the functional representative of the respective component. Requests should have the approval of local component leadership before submitting to UHS IT E.S.
• Installation of PeopleSoft Application patches should be presented by the technical application managers of IT E.S.
• Installation and upgrades to 3rd party software should be presented by a IT E.S. manager for functional applications, by IT E.C.S. manger for software to support the servers, by IT E.S. Technical Services manager for software to support databases, by IT ITAC to support LAN/WAN networks.
• Changes to the PS Launcher should be presented by the technical manager of IT Enterprise Systems (ES)

For scheduling purposes, the Change Notification Form should be presented as soon as a date for when the changes are required is known. In the event of an emergency, and changes occurred without notifying the Change Management Committee; the Change Notification Form must be completed and presented at the next CMC meeting.

The person submitting the Change Notification Form is responsible for notifying the original requestor and any other parties of when the change is scheduled and that the change to production has actually occurred.

The Change Management Committee will schedule the event subject to the following guidelines:

• The event is scheduled during an appropriate maintenance window. The 1st and 3rd weekends will be reserved for DBAs. The 2nd and 4th weekends will be reserved for system administration. Trading weekends is permissible. The requestor for a change is responsible for notify the Change Management Committee that a weekend swap is to occur. The 5th weekend will be negotiated between the manger of E.C.S. and the E.S. Technical Services Manager.
• The event does not conflict with functional application events which may prevent maintenance to occur. Lupe Sosa will be responsible for notifying the committee of conversion weekends which require use of the production system. The E.S. technical manager is responsible for notifying the committee of weekends needed to support the application groups.
• Changes will be bundled whenever practical.
  

UHS Release Planning Form
The UHS Release Planning Form shall be updated whenever the Change Management Committee receives a request for a change. The form shall indicate the scheduled date for the change and when the change actually occurred. This form shall be maintained and updated on the FAST web page weekly. The Change Management Committee shall appoint members of its committee to update the form and to post it on the web site.

The UHS release number shall receive a point number increase whenever any item on the release planning form has received a change, upgrade, or patch.

The UHS release number shall roll to the next major release number whenever a major release or upgrade is scheduled for PeopleSoft, Oracle, or an operating system.