An administrator is looking to apply a new service pack for an OS on several systems that run business critical applications for a large international finance corporation. Which of the following…

Deploying to a department before submitting change control bypasses the formal approval process and could violate the organization's change management policy and regulatory obligations.

Ensuring systems meet service pack prerequisites is a valid preparation step, but it is a subsequent activity that follows change control approval, not something done before it.

Testing on a non-critical server is a sound practice, but it must occur after change control is submitted and approved, not as the very first action.

Change control is the mandatory first step in formal IT change management frameworks such as ITIL; it requires documenting the planned change, assessing risk, obtaining approvals, and defining a rollback plan before any action is taken, which is especially critical in a large international finance environment subject to regulatory compliance requirements.