Change Window Readiness

Print, save or use this list during operational reviews.

Confirm the approved change scope, business reason, owner and maintenance window
Identify affected services, users, sites and upstream or downstream dependencies
Confirm an appropriate recovery path before the change, including validated backup or restore options where the system requires them
Define rollback steps, rollback ownership and the conditions that trigger rollback
Review scheduled tasks, background jobs, queues, integrations and automated notifications that could behave differently during or after the change
Confirm required service accounts, certificates, vendor access and external dependencies are valid without exposing or changing credentials unnecessarily
Define a test plan with clear technical and business success criteria for the changed service
Confirm stakeholder communication, escalation contacts and decision authority for extending, stopping or rolling back the change
Monitor logs, service health, user-impact signals and critical dependencies during and immediately after implementation
Record start and finish times, actions taken, validation results, exceptions, follow-up items and the final change outcome

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