As far as when an RFC should be sent to the CAB according to ITIL –

The ITIL Change Management process is more along the lines of what many organizations consider an Office of Project Management. The RFC is actually the request made by an expense center to spend money or resources on technology. The CAB is there to give three assessments: Technical, Business, and Financial.

Unfortunately in many organizations, the CAB is either a pro-forma group to rubber stamp requests that have already been partially implemented (everything has already been developed/tested and is ready for the production environment), or are collision prevention groups. They are there to ensure that multiple Changes that could adversely affect each other don’t get implemented at the same time.

What should happen is that when a group decides that they want to spend money, use resources, or in some way affect the production environment, that group opens a RFC. The Change Manager exams the RFC and determines if they want to take authority for approving the Change. If so, the RFC is categorized as a Minor Change and approved/denied. If the Change Manager does not want to take the authority, then they review/set the RFC’s priority (based on Impact and Urgency) and add it to the Agenda for the next CAB meeting as a Significant Change.

One of the Agenda Items for every CAB should be Assessment of Significant Changes. Those assessments will be the Technical, Financial and Business assessments. The Significant Changes should be reviewed in the order of highest priority first down to the lowest priority last.

When the Change has passed all three Assessments, it is the role of the Change Management Process to then follow the Change through its life cycle. This can easiest be thought of as a Project Management function. This is the typically done by an Office of Project Management who are responsible for managing all on-going projects in the organization. This is, in fact, part of the Change Management Process.

A suggested agenda might be:

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Significant/Major Changes –
Assessment of all submitted/re-submitted Significant/Major Changes (Major Changes that have been blessed by the Management Board)
Determination if any Significant Changes need review by the Management Board (if so, the Change is re-categorized as a Major Change)
Report of implemented/failed/backed out Significant/Major Changes
Review of any Incidents generated from Significant/Major Changes

Emergency Changes –
Assessment of all Incidents associated with Emergency Change requests
Report of implemented/failed/backed out Emergency Changes
Review of any Incidents generated from Emergency Changes

Minor Changes –
A report of Minor Changes approved/denied since last  CAB meeting
A report of Minor Changes implemented/failed/backed out
Review of Incidents generated from Minor Changes

Standard Changes –
A report of Standard Changes submitted since last CAB meeting
A report of Standard Changes implemented/failed/backed
Review of any Incidents generated from Standard Changes
Review of any suggested re-categorization of Minor to Standard Changes

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The purpose of having an agenda in this order is to make sure the primary purpose of the CAB is achieved. If the CAB does nothing other than review/assess/approve Significant Changes, then they have met their primary purpose. If you actually have time to get to re-categorization of Minor to Standard Changes, all the better.