ELI5: What is a Change Advisory Board (CAB)?
Before anyone makes a big change at school — like tearing down a wall — a group of teachers, the principal, and the janitor meet to decide if it’s a good idea. The CAB is that meeting for computer systems.
Definition
The Change Advisory Board (CAB) is a cross-functional committee of stakeholders—typically including IT management, security, operations, and business representatives—who review, evaluate, and approve or reject proposed changes to IT systems and infrastructure. The CAB ensures that changes are properly assessed for risk, have backout plans, and are scheduled appropriately before implementation.
Key Details
- Typically meets on a regular schedule (e.g., weekly) to review pending change requests.
- Evaluates changes for: business impact, security risk, technical risk, resource requirements, and testing.
- Emergency CAB (eCAB): A smaller, on-call group that can approve urgent changes outside the normal cycle.
- Change categories: Standard (pre-approved routine), Normal (requires CAB review), Emergency (expedited approval).
- CAB approval is required before changes enter maintenance windows for implementation.
Connections
- Parent: change-management — the governing body within the change management process
- See also: maintenance-windows, backoutrollback-plan