Both Incident Management and Problem Management Have a Place in a Service Desk Organization

Problem Management Policy

About Problem Management

Both overall issue management and specific problem management have a place in a service desk organization.

Issue management involves the process of recording each individual report of difficulty and each individual request. The issue management process places emphasis on the description, impact and resolution of each issue.

Problem management looks at wide-spread or recurring incidents and determines root causes. Problem management can also prescribe changes in order to provide temporary workaround solutions or to address the underlying problems.

Benefits of Problem Management

Key benefits of effective problem management include:

• A reduction in the number and business impact of incidents, problems, and known errors as problem management begins to resolve the root causes of incidents and deploy effective workarounds.
• Improved IT service quality as customers experience fewer repeat incidents.
• Increased cost effectiveness of support resources will occur as steps are taken to reduce the time spent by support teams in repetitive, time consuming, and costly support tasks. Resources can then be focused more efficiently on identifying the causes of incidents.
• Increased knowledge capital (the historic data used to identify trends and proactively identify any problem areas). This should reveal information about individual components within the infrastructure, as well as process or procedural breakdowns, and provide data for future problem analysis.
• Improved organizational learning can take place as accurate recording of problem management data leads to trending and identification of areas that really require attention.
• Increased first-time fix rate at the service desk as workarounds can be deployed to increase the speed of service restoration.
• Timely identification, diagnosis, and resolution of problems.
• Complete resolution of problems as underlying causes are identified and corrected.

Problem Management Goals and Objectives

The goal of problem management is to reduce the number and business impact of problems. The problem management system ensures that problems are not only resolved, but also investigated to prevent recurrences. Objectives include:

• Reduce loss of business caused by application outages
• Provide an audit trail of problems and the responses to thelm
• Increase recovery time
• Provide escalation procedures
• Coordinate with Change Management

Scope

A problem is defined as follows:

• Any incident that is marked as a Severity One or Severity Two in the Support Services Database
• Any wide-spread or recurring incident that
• Any incident involves an interruption to application or infrastructure services, any incident that prevents customers from sending instructions to SSCM LP or receiving confirmations or reports from SSCM LP
• any incident that prevents SSCM LP staff from perfoming their normal activities

These problems are entered automatically or manually into the Problem Management database, and are discussed in the daily Problem Management conference call.

Problem Life Cycle

Problem Recording

Most problems are entered into the Problem Management database in an automated process that causes certain incidents in the Incident Management System to be copied into the Problem Management System.

Problem Analysis

Problem analysis requires identification of the true cause of the problem. Efficient, effective problem analysis can significantly reduce the time it takes for resolution.

Many times, a problem cannot be solved by the implementation staff entirely unaided, and staff members from Infrastructure or Development must become involved. It’s important that a single person be available to coordinate, monitor and manage the problem to resolution, making sure that the appropriate staff are involved at the earliest stage and that the problem is resolved within the process performance targets.

Root Cause Analysis

Determination of the root cause of each problem is done by key members of the Service Desk and Production Support, as well as the appropriate representatives from Development Services and/or Infrastructure.

Prevention of Future Reoccurence

TBD

Dealing With Major Problems

Defining Major Problems

Major problems are those that involve significant outages or cause significant loss of revenue. A major incident may include a response to an external problem such as severe weather or accident, fire, or other emergency.

Communication Plan

During major incidents, the handling of communications can often become a major difficulty in its own right. The objective of the communications plan is to provide coordination of all communications during the life of the incident. The communications plan should be owned by the Service Desk Manager and be discussed and updated at each management team review meeting.

The communication plan should document:

• Who needs to be regularly updated.
• Contact details for all parties requiring updates.
• The different types of updates that will be required. Different update messages may be required depending on the audience receiving the communication:
• All Staff
• Staff working on the major incident
• Senior management
• Traders
• Customers
• Press/media statement
• How often each type of update is required and when the next one is due.
• Who is authorized to agree the release of each different update statement.
• The mechanism by which each update will be communicated. (Give consideration to the possibility that email might not always be available.)

Metrics and Reporting

Reports are automatically generated on a weekly basis and are emailed to senior management and all concerned staff.

These reports may include:

• Summary of closed problems: Problems that occurred, how long it took to resolve them, and what the solutions were
• Status of open problems: Existing unresolved problems, when they were opened, and why they remain as unresolved action items
• Problem trends and statistics: Number and type of problems, areas affected, frequency of occurrence
• Root cause of problems report: Problems that occurred, why they occurred, what can be done to prevent recurrence
• Action plan for the next period: Plans to improve on problem trends and resolution times

Last Updated on 2/26/2004 1:38 PM1