Write a change record with a rollback that has been tested

short · 40 min · Objective 4.1

Task

Produce a full change record for something you are genuinely going to do, carry it out, and close it. The rollback is the part that gets written as a single word, and this lab requires it to name the artefact it depends on and confirm that artefact exists before the change begins.

Steps

  1. Write lab/change/request.md with the four sections: purpose, scope, risk analysis including the risk of not doing it, and who approves.
  2. Write lab/change/plan.csv with header step,command_or_action,expected,time_minutes giving numbered steps specific enough for somebody else to execute.
  3. Write lab/change/rollback.csv with header step,action,artefact_needed,artefact_exists,time_minutes, and confirm every artefact exists BEFORE starting. Identify the point of no return, if there is one.
  4. Carry out the change, recording what actually happened against the plan in lab/change/execution.csv with header step,expected,actual,matched.
  5. Close it: write lab/change/close.md with what you tested, what you updated in your documentation, who you told, and the monitoring period.

Verify

grep -Eic 'purpose|scope|risk|approv' lab/change/request.md
awk -F, 'NR>1 && NF>=4 {n++} END {print n" planned step(s)"}' lab/change/plan.csv
awk -F, 'NR>1 && NF>=5 {n++} END {print n" rollback step(s)"}' lab/change/rollback.csv
awk -F, 'NR>1 && $4 ~ /no/ {n++} END {print n" rollback artefact(s) MISSING"}' lab/change/rollback.csv
awk -F, 'NR>1 && $4 ~ /no/ {n++} END {print n" step(s) that did not match the plan"}' lab/change/execution.csv
grep -Eic 'told|informed|notified' lab/change/close.md

Four request sections, a rollback step for each forward step, and zero missing rollback artefacts before starting. A missing artefact is not a lab failure -- it is the finding, and the correct response is to obtain it before continuing.

Notes

"Restore from backup" is not a rollback plan unless you can say which backup, where it is, how long the restore takes, and whether it has been tested. The artefact column is what forces that.

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