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 as a practice which is 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 the enterprises that have a number of suppliers contributing to various aspects of IT lifecycle. Typical Enterprise faces scenarios such as 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 etc. Typically, multiple service providers catering to different aspects of the business need to validate the agreed service levels on key metrics and critical deliverables and end up limiting their service to the incident management and reporting due to 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 for Problem Management are as follows
o The problem is detected through the trend analysis of various incidents
o The detected problem is logged and recorded
o The recorded problem is analyzed for its classification based on the level of impact
o Priority of the problem is determined based on the impact and business urgency
o The incidents logged specific to the detected problem are further investigated and diagnosed for further course of action
o Raise a Known Error Record and maintain the Known Error Data Base (KEDB)
o Resolve the issue with regular follow ups and enhanced supplier participation
o Close the problem post the resolution and conduct a periodic review for prevention
Problem Management practice can be further enhanced via a governance process that provides a robust, exhaustive framework which drives a trust and verify model, for fact-based discussions between all the stakeholders and integration of incident management, change management, known error database and knowledge management. It further helps if these practices are organized under one functional operating model.
An efficiently organized Problem Management practice has a number of value propositions to overall organization, its end users and providers.
· Reduced business impact of incidents by timely resolutions
· Proactive identification of possible enhancements
· Management information related to business focused SLA
· Improved monitoring
· Better Staff utilization: no more interruption –based handling of incidents
· Elimination of lost incidents and service requests
· Enhanced Customer Satisfaction
· Engage with the Service Provider Directly to achieve results based on prioritization
· Recommendations provided based on deep dive analysis
· Random audits on High priority incidents helps standardization and reoccurrence
tussom service management platform that utilizes unique set of processes, technology, and resources to drive value through dexterity and controls, can be leveraged to establish mature problem management and other ITSM practices fully compliant with ITIL v4 guidance. As an example, the auto-problem creation feature, which is what we have developed based on customer feedback, as a lot of clients were facing the issue of clubbing similar/duplicate tickets to one ticket and then resolve them as a Problem ticket. In summary Problem Management practice implemented through the tussom tool has the following benefits.
· Provides fact-base data and analytics to help clients address tough decisions and issues
· Consistently executes key governance processes to drive SLA assurance and ongoing management
· Puts strong structure and mechanisms in place establishing a rigorous expectation and tone with provider groups
· Identify the root cause of the incident
· Track the category of incidents which are constantly repeated as a cause
· Reasons behind the slow progress of incidents
· Highlight the top problems creating categories
· Understand the nature of the incidents reported and minimize reoccurrence
Please reach out for a discussion and demo to experience, how tussom can help your organization improve the delivery of problem management and other ITSM practices.