Microsoft Exchange 2000 Operations Guide — Version 1.042
Figure 3.1
The Change Management Process
Minor and Standard Changes
The advantage of minor and standard changes is that individuals with less authority can be
pre-assigned the permissions to perform them. This is perfectly fine, because the changes
themselves are not likely to cause significant problems when implemented. Of course, the
change manager, and perhaps the change advisory board will, at some point, have deter-
mined whether a particular change is minor or standard. However, once this is done and
the nature of the change is documented, the change owner can be pre-authorized to either
perform the change in person or to delegate that authority to another person.
A classic example of a standard change is the addition of a user. This type of change
should have been anticipated, so the change manager will have already pre-authorized the
change owner to be responsible for this change. The change should be thoroughly docu-
mented with standard settings for items such as mailbox size limits and deleted item
retention time.
Scripting Minor and Standard Changes
Although minor and standard changes do not take very long, they are among the most
repetitive of tasks and therefore the ones most likely to benefit from automation.
To further reduce the amount of time spent on these tasks, you may want to consider using
automated tools. Using the example of mailbox creation, the change advisory board may
have previously categorized users according to job role. There would be a series of pre-
defined settings for each type of user. Administrators could then use a Web-based tool to
create the users, specifying the job role. Scripts would run against Active Directory to place