Want to implement 1 week of changes from TEST Service Desk to Prod. Do we need to suspend PROD?

[Deleted user]

We have been working on some changes that we made to our TEST Service Desk that are mostly cosmetic but with a few new fields to be added.. We are ready to implement into Production Service Desk. Should we suspend/stop our Production Service Desk activities in order to implement these changes? We are having push back to suspending these activities for a week in order to implement these changes.  Any other suggestions or similar experiences? How did you handle? Thank you.

[tokcum]

Dear Marian,

I have often implemented changes in Jira & Jira Service Desk under Control of Change Management. That’s why I wonder what kind and size of change you have prepared for in your Test instance that it takes you a week to implement in prod.

I assume that the few changes to fields and introduction of new fields you mentioned leads to a long sequence of subsequent actions in workflows, masks, portal, automation and so on. But even then I cannot imagine this has to sum up to an uninterrupted downtime of a week.

I see these approaches:

1. Divide your change into smaller steps which are in itself consistent.

2. Share the work to be done with multiple people. E.g. if you have to change 30 customer request types work with three people on it.

3. Build a dedicated testing team.

4. Do not mix things up such as an update with changes on workflow and customization.

5. Sometimes configuration items can be exported and imported. Check if things you have to configure allow export / import.

6. Practice the change in Test env until the change runs smoothly.
7. Plan to leverage external support backing you up in rolling out the change.

I hope this is of some help to you. My tips could be more specific in case you can give more details on the change planned.

Kind regards,

Tobias