Incident Management Best Practices
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The document outlines best practices for ITIL incident management, focusing on minimizing business disruption by efficiently restoring service operations. Key steps include choosing the right tool, automating processes, sharing information through knowledgebases, gaining executive support, integrating with other IT processes, and striving for continuous improvement. Effective incident management plays a vital role in maintaining IT service quality and reducing future incidents.
Incident Management Best Practices
- 1. Incident Management Best Practices Step ITIL by Step A Step-by-Step Guide ITIL Incident Management aims to minimize disruption to the business by restoring service operation to agreed levels as quickly as possible. Incident Management is often the first process instigated when introducing the ITIL quality framework to a Service Desk, and it offers the most immediate and highly visible cost reduction and quality gains. Step 1: Choose the Right Tool Getting the process and the defined roles correct for your objectives is the main goal. Automating those processes makes it all easier, faster, more effective and efficient. The software used to handle Incident Managment should include all of the following features: 1. Ability to manage an incident through the entire lifecycle 2. Enforcement of standardized methods and procedures ensuring efficient and prompt handling of all incidents 3. An automatic escalation system that prioritizes and routes incidents according to your specific requirements – including Service Level Agreements 4. Ability to classify incidents 5. Ability to report on high level or down to the detail on every incident– real-time 6. Ability to allow any user to request and track incident status 7. An integrated and searchable knowledgebase that can be populated with common solutions and work-arounds to known problems 8. Ability to manage and report on Key Process Indicators (KPIs) such as number of incidents by category, priority, resolution, service level agreement, etc. Sample Incident Management Process TechExcel ServiceWise includes a Tip: Items to include on an graphical workflow editor. With Incident Form New this editor, organizations may ‘draw’ their process into place. ·- Incident Owner To the left is an example of ·- Date submitted Submit New how an organization might -- Incident Classification Incident choose to implement the ·- Priority incident mangement process. ·- Description of the incident ·- Resolution Details Incident Review Tie r1 Pick up Work in Progress Need More Info Tier 1 Step 2: Automate Additional Escalate to Every IT organization should seek to automate processes Reopen Info Requested Need More Info Tier 2 whenever possible, and the Incident Management process is no exception. Automation is important because it Work in Progress minimizes processing errors, facilitates faster response times, Notify Customer Tier 2 and helps to ensure process compliance. There are countless options for automating the processes related to Incident Resolved Management, ranging from email notifications to escalation Notify Customer alerts to knowledgebases with artifical intelligence. What is critical is selecting and using automation wisely. Buy and use Resolved the automation tools that make sense for your organization— those that help you manage incidents more Resolved efficiently and effectively. Closed www.techexcel.com
- 2. Incident Management Best Practices A Step-by-Step Guide Step 3: Share Information Giving the Incident Management process access to information greatly improves its capability to resolve incidents quickly and efficiently. Information stores such as knowledgebases play a key role. Properly configured and updated knowledgebases will help analysts identify known problems, recommend fixes and workarounds, and alert analysts of potential issues. Integrating Incident Management with a knowledgebase that is customer facing also empowers customers to find answers to their own problems and, assuming a web-based system, is available to them 24/7. Step 4: Gain Support of the Executives To realize the true benefits of a formalized process, executive buy-in and support is foundational. To sell formalized Incident Management as well as any other ITIL process in the organization, proponents must communicate the benefits in terms everyone will understand. Many of the potential benefits--more efficient use of IT resources, Integrated knowledge search within Incident Management elimination of redundant work, enhanced projects, greater reliability and availability of IT services--will apply to many facets of the business. Proponents need to educate managers about how these benefits will apply to the organization, how they will be measured, and the downside of not using best practices in managing IT services. Step 5: Integrate With other IT processes Closely linking Incident Management processes with Configuration and Problem Management will improve your ability to share information and manage incidents proactively. Problem Management processes allow your organization to eliminate the pesky root causes of incidents. Close ties to Configuration Management will allow potential configuration problems to be identified and resolved prior to the occurrence of incidents. Step 6: Strive for Continuous Improvement One of the major benefits, if not THE benefit of process orientated approaches to managing IT services and infrastructure is that it enables continuous improvement. An organization is never totally satisfied with the current state of affairs and always wants to improve its service offerings. ITIL enables continuous improvement by allowing organizations to start measuring everything in IT. That is why it is so important to record everything. Technical people normally avoid documentation, they resist to documenting everything they do while they have more important tasks to complete like fixing a critical server. The benefit of having everything recorded outweighs the hassle of recording it by far. However, take note, it usually takes some effort to realize these benefits, which makes it even more difficult to get the techies recording their work. Tip: Map out the roles and responsibilities and associated service levels for Incident Management. At a minimum, the processes should include: Call logging, Call assignment, Call resolution, Call documentation and knowledge transfer, and Call closure. While Incident Management can be a thankless job, it’s a core process that every IT staff needs to master. Incident Management is the linchpin that connects the community of IT services users to the resources for resolving incidents that exist within IT shops. Incident Management identifies, classifies, and manages the resolution of incidents while minimizing their impact to the business. This role is critical in ensuring that the impact of IT incidents on the business is managed effectively, and it offers the hope that future incidents can be mitigated as Incident Management programs become more proactive. www.techexcel.com