220-1102 Operational Procedures Practice Question
A technician has implemented an approved change to a server. According to standard change management processes, what is the next step?
⚠ Common exam trap
A common mix-up: candidates confuse the order of change management steps, often selecting 'Close the change request' immediately after implementation, but the review must occur first to validate success and capture lessons learned before formal closure.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Review the change
After implementing an approved change, the next step in standard change management processes is to review the change. This review ensures the change was implemented as planned, verifies that it achieved the desired outcome without unintended side effects, and documents any lessons learned. The review typically occurs after a predefined monitoring period, not immediately upon implementation, to allow time for observing system behavior.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Create a backout plan
Why it's wrong here
A backout plan is a pre-defined, approved strategy for reverting a system to its original state if a change fails, and it must be created during the planning and risk-assessment phase. Constructing a backout plan after implementation defeats its purpose, because the plan is supposed to be ready before any modification is applied. In the standard change lifecycle, the immediate post-implementation action is verification, not reinventing contingency documentation.
- ✓
Review the change
Why this is correct
The post-implementation review is the formal verification step where the actual system behavior is checked against the change plan's expected outcomes, including functional correctness, performance, and absence of regression. This review is the immediate next step because the change cannot be considered successful or ready for closure until stability has been confirmed. Review techniques may include inspecting logs, running targeted tests, and comparing monitoring metrics against baseline thresholds.
- ✗
Close the change request
Why it's wrong here
Closing the change request is the terminal phase of the change lifecycle and requires documentation that the change was successfully reviewed, any anomalies were resolved, and all approval criteria were met. If closure happens right after implementation, the organization loses the evidence needed to prove that the change is stable, which could lead to undetected failures surfacing after the request is archived. Premature closure also prevents proper auditing and may obscure the change's true impact from future incident analysis.
- ✗
Communicate the change to stakeholders
Why it's wrong here
Stakeholder communication is an ongoing activity around a change, but it is not the mandated next step immediately following implementation because stakeholders need to hear about the verified result, not merely that the implementation step has been executed. A best practice is to send a pre-implementation notice to inform stakeholders of upcoming disruption, and a post-review notification only after the change has been tested and confirmed stable. Communicating too early risks announcing a false success if the change fails its review, eroding trust and potentially causing stakeholders to act on incorrect information.
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Key term
Change management
Change management is the structured process of planning, approving, implementing, and reviewing changes to IT systems to minimize risk and disruption.
Key term
Lessons learned
Lessons learned is the process of capturing, analyzing, and documenting knowledge gained from past incidents or projects to improve future security operations and prevent recurrence of problems.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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