Within change enablement, what is a change authority?
ITIL 4 Foundation, objective 7. Seven ITIL practices in detail medium
Draft — not checked yet. This question was written from the published exam objectives and cites the clause it comes from, but nobody has yet read it against that clause and signed for it.
It is kept out of search results and out of mock exams until they have. Read the source below before you take the answer as settled.
The options
Not correct The person who implements the change and confirms it worked
Wrong. Implementing and verifying is delivery work. Keeping authorisation distinct from implementation is part of what makes the assessment meaningful.
Not correct A permanent committee that must convene to approve every change in the organisation
Wrong. Centralising all authorisation in one standing committee is a bottleneck ITIL 4 explicitly moves away from; in high-velocity organisations authorisation is often decentralised to peer review.
Correct The person or group that authorises a change
Correct. 'Change authority' names the role of authorising, whoever fills it — an individual, a peer reviewer, or a board — and different change types and models assign it differently.
Not correct The document that records the risk assessment for a proposed change
Wrong. That is an artefact produced during assessment. A change authority is a person or group holding a decision right, not a record.
Why
A change authority is simply whoever holds the right to authorise a given change. It is assigned by the change model that applies, which is why a routine normal change, a high-risk normal change, and an emergency change can each have a different change authority — and why highly automated organisations can push authorisation down to peer review without abandoning control.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- ITIL 4 syllabus clause 7
- What it says
- The change authority is the person or group who authorises a change; it is assigned per change model and may be decentralised.
Practise this
Reading one question is not practice. The trainer will draw a set from objective 7 and space the ones you get wrong.