Change is inevitable and will eventually transform everything. EdWeb is no exception from this rule and anybody who is a part of it has the opportunity to determine its direction, preferably for the better. Change is an integral and necessary part of the modern philosophy of development and service management, while managing it requires planning, effort and processes. Enter the EdWeb Technical Change Advisory board (CAB).

Following on from the best practice guidelines from ITIL, which is one of the most accepted approaches to IT service management worldwide, the EdWeb CAB is responsible for the coordination, submission and approval or rejection of Requests for Change (RFCs) for EdWeb, its distribution and the front-end of the University Website. This, alongside the EdGEL, covers the fundamental parts of the central University service.

In simple terms, and getting away from the IT terminology for a bit, if you want to see a change to EdWeb’s front or back end, this is the process that allows its submission and eventual realisation. To make it even simpler, this process is available to everyone within the University.

Ideas can be as simple as, ‘I want to add a new content element to help me build my content’, or as complicated as, ‘A new page content type to facilitate my college/school/unit’s business needs’, and should be submitted with supporting details to help make a case for approval by the CAB. Providing more information will help build a better case for a change, which then has more chance of being approved. Remember, you don’t have to be technical to submit a change for EdWeb, but UWP encourages engagement with developers, as well as working in groups to submit collaborative work.

When a change is submitted, the Change Manager will review it and make contact for further information. They will then pass it to the next step, which is an overall evaluation of the submission, before finalising it and forwarding it to the CAB for approval or rejection.

To help people better understand the process, and provide clarity about what’s been submitted, a new dedicated wiki space has been created which contains all the relevant information. Colleagues interested in submitting changes for EdWeb should go through these materials and if they still have questions, send them by email to website.support@ed.ac.uk

• EdWeb Tech CAB wiki [EASE login required]

As there is the option to download and use the EdWeb Distribution to develop local solutions, the EdWeb CAB provides the process to request these changes become part of the EdWeb central code. The benefit of engagement with the University website community will be to take advantage of local feature developments for the whole of the EdWeb publishing community. Furthermore, this will save time when updating EdWeb Distribution local instances, as there will be no need to manage centrally integrated local developments.

• EdWeb Distribution website

What’s next? Just gather your ideas, prepare and submit them. Be part of the change!