Explain Lead Time Standards and Expectations for me.
I will preface by noting my role is a Release Engineer; so I work with the Agile teams to plan, review, and schedule work. Part of my role is to get ServiceNow Change Requests through the approval process.
My issue is a new "Lead Time" standard has been implemented recently; requiring all Change Requests to have tasks accepted by implementation and validation resources 72 hours prior to the Change window; otherwise its "Expedited". The task acceptance is only opened after the change is submitted for approval and the implementation plan/schedule is locked in/not editable. In order for Change Management to approve it as expedited change, it must be have business justification.
When something as simple as a task is not accepted prior to the 72 hour window; the Change Request becomes "expedited" and the justification is required to move forward. This is after code review, QA approval, scheduling, pre-release approval, etc. Then when things get rejected for their expedited reason, it becomes a nightmare having to re do all the work to get it to the Change Management approval state. Especially considering it counts the weekend when a lot of the teams are not on to accept tasks. So for example:
Change Request for a release planned for Tuesday; has to be approved and all tasks accepted by Friday in order for Change Management to approve. Coupled with offshore resources having to accept tasks/etc; its tedious.
My question is how do other organizations handle this "lead time" metric and standard? should it be higher up in the process? I can't babysit ServiceNow tasks and follow up with teams and still work on future tickets and implementation plans.