Change Management & Release Management Policies

Document Version & Control

  • Version: 1.0
  • Last Review Date: 6 Jan 2025
  • Next Review Date: [12 months from last review or upon significant changes]
  • Approver: CTO, DPO

Purpose & Scope
These policies define the processes, responsibilities, and controls for managing changes to our SaaS platform, infrastructure, and related services, as well as the release of new features, patches, and updates. They ensure that changes and releases are planned, tested, documented, approved, and communicated in a controlled and consistent manner, minimizing disruption to services and maintaining compliance with applicable regulations and standards.

The scope includes:

  • Application code, infrastructure as code (IaC), and configuration changes.
  • Database schema modifications and related data migrations.
  • Security patches, OS updates, and middleware changes.
  • Integration updates with third-party APIs or services.
  • Scheduled and emergency changes/releases in production and staging environments.

Compliance & References

  • Standards & Frameworks: ISO 27001: A.12 (Operational Security), ITIL Change Management, SOC 2 (Change Management)
  • Regulations: PDPA (Singapore), GDPR (if applicable)
  • Related Internal Policies:
    • Information Security Policy
    • Data Management & Database Policies
    • Encryption & Key Management Policy
    • Incident Response & Breach Notification Policy
    • Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery Policies
    • Authentication & Access Control Policy

Roles & Responsibilities

  • Change Advisory Board (CAB) or Change Review Group: Reviews and approves significant changes, evaluates risk, ensures alignment with business goals.
  • CTO: Final approval on major changes, ensures alignment with technology strategy and resource availability.
  • DPO: Reviews changes for security implications and compliance requirements.
  • Development & QA Teams: Propose, implement, and test changes; ensure code and configuration quality before release.
  • DevOps & Infrastructure Team: Implements infrastructure changes, coordinates deployments, and ensures proper rollback mechanisms.
  • Release Manager (If Assigned): Oversees the release cycle, ensures that all prerequisites are met, manages release calendars, and communicates with stakeholders.

Change Management Policy

  1. Change Request & Documentation:
    • All proposed changes must be documented in a change request (e.g., via a ticket in GitHub Issues, Jira, or another project management system).
    • Each change request must include a description, rationale, impact analysis, risk assessment, testing plan, and rollback strategy.
  2. Change Categorization & Prioritization:
    • Standard Changes: Low-risk, routine changes with pre-approved procedures (e.g., routine OS patching).
    • Normal Changes: Non-routine changes requiring review and approval by the CAB or appointed change reviewers.
    • Emergency Changes: High-priority changes required to address incidents, security vulnerabilities, or critical service outages. Emergency changes may be fast-tracked with post-implementation review afterward.
  3. Risk & Impact Assessment:
    • Evaluate the potential impact on system availability, performance, security, and compliance.
    • Determine if the change affects client-facing services, data integrity, or integration points with third-party systems.
  4. Change Approval Process:
    • Normal changes undergo review by peers or leads and may require CAB approval depending on risk level.
    • Emergency changes are reviewed and approved by authorized personnel (e.g., CTO or delegate) as quickly as possible, with documentation completed afterward.
  5. Testing & Validation:
    • Changes must be tested in a non-production environment (e.g., staging) to validate functionality, performance, and security before production deployment.
    • Implement test plans that cover unit, integration, regression, and security testing as applicable.
  6. Scheduling & Communication:
    • Schedule changes to minimize downtime and disruption, often during defined maintenance windows.
    • Communicate upcoming changes to stakeholders, including affected internal teams and, if significant, provide client notifications as per SLA or contractual obligations.
  7. Implementation & Rollback:
    • Follow established deployment procedures and verify post-implementation health checks.
    • Maintain a documented rollback strategy to revert to a known working state if the change fails or introduces severe issues.
  8. Post-Implementation Review:
    • Conduct a post-implementation review of significant or problematic changes to identify lessons learned and opportunities for improvement.
    • Update documentation, runbooks, and configuration management repositories (e.g., Git) as needed.

Release Management Policy

  1. Release Planning & Scheduling:
    • Establish a release calendar to coordinate and plan major, minor, and patch releases.
    • Group compatible changes into release cycles for efficient testing, deployment, and communication.
  2. Version Control & Branching Strategy:
    • Use a recognized version control system (e.g., Git) with a defined branching strategy (e.g., GitFlow, trunk-based) to manage code changes.
    • Tag release candidates and final releases clearly in the repository for traceability.
  3. Release Packaging & Validation:
    • Ensure releases are packaged consistently, including all necessary components (code, database migrations, configuration files).
    • Validate release candidates in staging or pre-production environments. Run automated tests, performance checks, and security scans as part of CI/CD pipelines.
  4. Pre-Release Approvals:
    • The Release Manager (or designated approver) must confirm that all release criteria are met (e.g., tests passed, documentation updated, risk assessments done) before granting final release approval.
    • DPO and CTO involvement is required for major releases affecting critical systems or compliance posture.
  5. Deployment & Monitoring:
    • Deploy releases using automated tools (CI/CD pipelines) and infrastructure as code where possible.
    • Monitor system performance, logs, and security alerts post-deployment.
    • If issues arise, execute the rollback or hotfix procedures as documented.
  6. Release Notes & Communication:
    • Publish release notes detailing new features, fixes, known issues, and relevant instructions.
    • Communicate changes to internal stakeholders, and if necessary, clients (especially for major releases or UI changes).
  7. Post-Release Review:
    • After major releases, conduct a retrospective to evaluate the release process, detect issues, and improve future cycles.
    • Update release-related documentation, runbooks, and support materials.

Compliance & Audit

  • Regulatory & Standards Compliance:
    Ensure change and release management practices align with ISO 27001, SOC 2, PDPA, GDPR, and contractual obligations.

  • Audit Trails & Documentation:
    Maintain complete records of changes and releases, including approvals, test results, and communication logs.
    Provide evidence to internal and external auditors as required.

  • Policy Exceptions:
    Document and approve any exceptions through a formal risk acceptance process overseen by the CTO and DPO.

Training & Awareness

  • Team Training:
    Provide training on change and release procedures to all relevant personnel (Developers, DevOps, QA, Security).
    Reinforce adherence to defined processes through periodic reminders and checklists.

Policy Review & Maintenance

  • Review Cycle:
    Review these policies at least annually or after major incidents, regulatory changes, or significant process updates.
    Update the policies and related documentation to reflect process improvements, tools, or organizational changes.

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