As practitioners of both Art & Science of IT Service Management, we are all aware that problem management plays a vital role in any business engagement and helps to achieve results. ITIL defined Problem Management practice as responsible for managing the lifecycle of all problems. The primary objectives of problem management are to prevent problems and resulting incidents from happening, to eliminate recurring incidents, and to minimize the impact of incidents that cannot be prevented. Problem Management includes the activities required to diagnose the root cause of incidents identified through the Incident Management process, and to determine the resolution to those problems. Problem management works together with Incident Management and Change Management to ensure that IT service availability and quality are improved. I have experienced this first hand while managing the Regional APAC IT Service Operations for one of the largest insurance companies in the world.
As a best practice when incidents are resolved, information about the resolution is recorded. Over time, this information is used to speed up the resolution time and identify permanent solutions, reducing the number and resolution time of incidents. This results in less downtime and less disruption to business-critical systems.
Though Problem Management is absolutely essential for an organization, numerous roadblocks tend to occur especially in enterprises that have a number of suppliers contributing to various aspects of the IT lifecycle. Typical Enterprise No management/staff commitment, hence no resources, Lack of clarity of business needs, Badly defined service goals, Working practices not reviewed or changed, No adequate service levels defined between the providers, Multiple service providers catering to different aspects of the business need to validate the agreed service levels on key metrics and critical deliverables, Service Providers limit their service to the Incident Management and reporting, lack of repository of information on performance.
Some of the ways in which these can be resolved and mitigated are by establishing robust & objective measures of service quality, Provide Customer with the ability to modify Service Level priorities based on evolving technology and business needs, encourage continually improving provider performance year after year, deep dive in Incident Management to derive meaningful insights through analytics, provide benchmarking and problem management recommendations, enhance service provider participation and collaboration for eliminating the root cause of the problem.
- The key methodology Problem Management are as follows
- The problem is detected through the trend analysis of various incidents
- The detected problem is logged and recorded
- The recorded problem is analyzed for its classification based on the level of impact
- Priority of the problem is determined based on the impact and business urgency
- The incidents logged specifically to the detected problem are further investigated and diagnosed for further course of action
- Raise a Known Error Record and maintain the Known Error Data Base ( KEDB)
- Resolve the issue with regular follow-ups and enhanced supplier participation
- Close the problem post the resolution and conduct a periodic review for prevention