TPG Qualification Practice Exam

Which statement best distinguishes change management from release management?

Change management handles planning deployments, release management handles approvals for changes.

Change management controls lifecycle of change requests; release management plans and coordinates deployment into production.

The key idea is that change management governs the lifecycle of a change request—capturing, assessing, obtaining approvals, implementing, and closing the change—focusing on risk and authorization. Release management, meanwhile, handles delivering a set of changes as a release: planning the release, coordinating builds and testing, and deploying into production with proper scheduling and stakeholder communication.

This aligns with the statement that change management controls the lifecycle of change requests, while release management plans and coordinates deployment into production. The other options mix up responsibilities or oversimplify the roles—for example, approvals and deployment planning are not swapped in reality, and security or performance aren’t the sole domains of these functions.

Change management approves releases; release management creates change requests.

Change management is about security only; release management is about performance.