change-management-policy

Specify tested rollback evidence, abort criteria for major changes, and post-change retrospectives for emergencies. Require approver checklists per risk tier to prevent rubber-stamping and ensure rollback reality matches the blast radius before production release.

Common CAB anti-patterns include rationale-less approvals, blame-shifting, vibes-based decisions, and bottlenecks. Prevent them by defining auditable record structures per tier and anti-pattern safeguards that catch real risk during review before shipping production changes.

Emergency change carve-outs allow production changes during declared incidents without standard review. Define rules to use them correctly during incident governance without turning the exception into the default, requiring post-change retrospective evidence for auditable records.

Define freeze-window rules during incident and release planning to prevent risky production changes. Apply risk tiering to determine when changes should be blocked, ensuring approval workflows enforce freeze periods and maintain rollback evidence for auditable compliance.

Audit existing CAB workflows by applying the four-question tier assignment test and anti-pattern safeguards. Check if current approval workflows match risk tier definitions, evidence requirements, and approver checklists to identify gaps in production change governance.