Assistant Manager - IT Change and Release Control

Role Overview

The Assistant Manager for IT Change and Release Control is responsible for ensuring smooth and secure transition of changes and releases within IT infrastructure and applications. This role oversees detailed assessment, approval processes, coordination across teams, and compliance with organizational standards to minimize business disruption.

Key Responsibilities

• Evaluate and validate change and release requests to identify risks, potential conflicts, dependencies, and business impact.
• Organize and facilitate Change Advisory Board (CAB) and Emergency Change Advisory Board (ECAB) meetings to ensure decisions are well-informed, accountable, and authorized.
• Manage the Change & Release Calendar aligning change plans, release schedules, blackout periods, and critical business events to safeguard service stability.
• Coordinate software and infrastructure releases across diverse environments (development, testing, staging, production), ensuring readiness, proper approvals, and adherence to scheduled windows.
• Confirm readiness of changes/releases by verifying test evidence, rollback strategies, risk assessments, security approvals, and business sign-offs before production deployment.
• Maintain comprehensive, precise, and auditable documentation covering requests, approvals, release notes, implementation guides, rollback processes, and post-release results.
• Track and analyze Change & Release Management key performance indicators such as success rates, emergency changes, failures, and rollback frequencies to identify trends and enhance processes.
• Lead Post-Implementation Reviews to gather insights, address corrective measures, and resolve systemic problems.
• Provide support during IT audits by supplying requisite evidence, ensuring process compliance, and initiating improvement actions.
• Collaborate closely with IT operations, development teams, business units, cybersecurity, quality assurance, and external vendors to manage change and release workflows end-to-end.
• Keep all relevant stakeholders informed with timely communication on status, risks, dependencies, and impacts associated with change and release activities.
• Ensure strict compliance with Change & Release Management policies, governance structures, and ITIL best practice guidelines.
• Oversee demand management by cooperating with business relationship managers, service portfolio managers, and service level managers to understand and influence IT service demand.
• Plan and implement strategies to manage demand, mitigating risks and issues affecting service delivery.
• Align IT strategies with broader business objectives, delegating tasks effectively within teams.
• Maintain and update processes, tools, and templates to support effective demand management.
• Facilitate demand management meetings, coordinate deliverable preparations, and manage progress through various demand phases.

Qualifications and Experience

• Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related discipline.
• Over five years experience in IT Change Management, Change & Release Management, or IT Service Management roles.
• ITIL Foundation certification is required.

Skills and Competencies

• Outstanding communication, negotiation, and presentation abilities.
• Exceptional organization and time management skills.
• Solid understanding of IT infrastructure, enterprise-level applications, and cloud platforms.
• Practical familiarity with Agile, DevOps, and Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment pipelines, including governance aspects.
• Ability to evaluate technical risks effectively without needing to perform hands-on technical tasks.