PART 1 - Incident Management

Providing and delivering IT services often presents those accountable and responsible for the delivery of those services with a myriad of issues and priorities. I’ve been involved in some very lengthy discussions and passionate debates on the topic of where do you start with ITIL – the short answer – it depends. That being said, keep in mind that most organizations are likely already executing part or most of these processes, albeit probably not as effectively or efficiently as they would like.
There are many different approaches – depending on your symptoms, goals, culture, and priorities - but I have observed some common themes to address certain service challenges. In most cases, especially reactive based IT service organizations – you can find the most benefit in your efforts in addressing and improving your Service Desk, Incident, and Problem Management collectively. This is the first part in the series – Incident Management.

What is Incident Management?
Incident management is a defined process for logging, recording and resolving incidents. The aim of Incident Management is to restore the service to the customer as quickly as possible, often through a workaround or temporary fixes, rather than through trying to find a permanent solution.

Differences between Incident Management and Problem Management

1. The aim of incident management is to restore the service to the customer as quickly as possible, often through a workaround, rather than through trying to find a permanent solution.
2. Problem management differs from incident management in that its main goal is the detection of the underlying causes of an incident and the best resolution and prevention.
3. In many situations the goals of problem management can be in direct conflict with the goals of incident management.
4. Deciding which approach to take requires careful consideration. A sensible approach would be to restore the service as quickly as possible (incident management), but ensuring that all details are recorded. This will enable problem management to continue once a workaround had been implemented.
5. Discipline is required, as the idea that the incident is fixed is likely to prevail. However, the incident may well appear again if the resolution to the problem is not found.

Incident Vs Problem
An incident is where an error occurs: something doesn’t work the way it is expected.

This is often referred to as:
•    a fault
•    error
•    it doesn’t work!
•    a problem

A problem can be:
•    the occurrence of the same incident many times
•    an incident that affects many users
•    the result of network diagnostics revealing that some systems are not operating in the expected way.

Therefore a problem can exist without having immediate impact on the users, whereas incidents are usually more visible and the impact on the user is more immediate.

Issues With Deciding On An Incident Management Process
There will be some who that feel implementing a process called incident management in the company is time consuming and not necessary. Be prepared to overcome:

•    absence of visible management or staff commitment, resulting in non-availability of resources for implementation
•    lack of clarity about the company’s needs
•    out-of-date working practices
•    poorly defined objectives, goals and responsibilities
•    absence of knowledge for resolving incidents
•    inadequate staff training
•    resistance to change.

Define What Needs To Be Done to Implement Incident Management

•    Before identifying your needs, consider what you want to achieve.
•    This is an opportunity to re-evaluate the way you have, to date, approached and fixed incidents.

•    Rethink the processes and activities of what currently happens. Does your technical staff always try problem management before incident management?
•    Understand the difference between incident management and problem management.
•    Technical staff will always try to solve the cause of a problem. Their way of thinking needs to change so that they approach it with incident management before problem management.
•    Choose which areas to improve and which processes to remove.
•    You need to sell the idea to the other staff, so make it appeal to yourself first.

I’m interested to hear your thoughts.