Changes and deployments

A proposed change records its summary, risk, scheduled start and end, service and rollback plan. The reviewer records a separate change approval reviews decision and reason. This keeps the plan apart from the human decision that permits it to proceed. A rejected change stays visible as Rejected; an approved change moves into implementation only when the team is ready.

Optimization deployments records the service, environment, version, application time, status and any reversal reference. Savings reversal checks later compares the expected baseline with actual realized cost. The deployment result and cost result answer different questions. A Succeeded deployment may still fail to produce the expected saving.

• Plan. State the service impact, risk, time window and rollback path.
• Approval. Record who reviewed the change and why it was approved, rejected or deferred.
• Outcome. Track deployment status and compare the later cost result with the baseline.

Name the Change Approver for each service and define which risk level needs a wider review. Agree the evidence required before a reviewer chooses Approve. The team should also decide who can mark a change Verified and how much usage history is enough to judge the saving. Check that a rollback plan is usable by the engineer on duty during the scheduled window.

A rehearsal should include a rejected path as well as an approved path. The reviewer must be able to see why the decision differed and the engineer must be able to tell which change may proceed.

A service owner proposes a capacity reduction after an underuse review. The change describes the resource, risk, start and end, and how to restore capacity if performance falls. The Change Approver reads the plan, records an Approve decision and reason, and the owner marks the change Approved. During the window, Cloud Operations Engineer records a deployment in Applying and then Succeeded after observing the service. Finance Manager compares subsequent charges with the expected baseline. The owner marks the change Verified only when the result is supported; if the service is restored, the deployment and change retain their reversal trail.

• Changes In Review — Find changes waiting for a decision.
• Change Schedule — See approved and implementing work by planned window.

Use change to verification and incident investigation.