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Service Management
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TimelessMIND Enterprise Incident Manager
The goal of Incident Management is to restore normal service operations as quickly as possible and to minimize the adverse effect on business operations, thus ensuring that the best possible levels of service quality and availability are maintained. ‘Normal service operations’ is defined here as service operations agreed upon within the Service Level Agreement (SLA) limits.
Incident as defined by ITIL
An Incident is described as any event which is not part of the standard operation of a service and which may cause an interruption to, or a reduction in, the quality of that service.
The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) standards for 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 ITIL quality framework to a Service Desk, and offers the most immediate and highly visible cost reduction and quality gains. The effectiveness of Incident Management is closely aligned to the accuracy and design of the Configuration Management Database (CMDB), and its ongoing effectiveness is significantly supplemented by the implementation of Problem and Change Management.
Incident Management Lifecycle
There are typically seven stages involved in Incident Management:
1. Incident Detection – This is where the incident is recognized in the application and recorded in detail to ensure sufficient information is provided to help form a solution.
2. Incident Classification - Each incident is classified and assigned a priority level based on its potential impact on day to day operations.
3. Initial Support - Initial Support is designed to restore normal service levels as set by the Service Level Agreement. This often involves creating a temporary work-around to the incident until a solution can be developed.
4. Investigation and Diagnosis - This stage is designed to explore the incident and all affected data to come up with a possible course of action for a resolution.
5. Resolution of the Incident - Incident resolution is where the solution is put into effect to correct the incident that caused problems to the users system. This stage ensures compliance to incident regulations and standards before the solution is implemented.
6. Incident Closure - Incident Closure is the stage in the incident Lifecycle when the user agrees that the incident has been sufficiently resolved and the trouble ticket that was originally generated will be closed. This trouble ticket will remain in the CMDB for future consideration should an incident with the same root cause present itself.
7. Incident Monitoring - Incident Monitoring is done for a specific period of time to ensure the trouble does not reappear.
ITIL and the impact on Incident Management
When implementing an Incident Management standard such as the ITIL, the company is ultimately being offered piece of mind. By enforcing the standardized methods and procedures it ensures that incidents are handled efficiently and promptly to reduce the impact on the company. An automated escalation system will prioritize and route incidents according to specific requirements, for instance, the stage of the life cycle it occurred in, the impact on the service, the amount of time taken to correct the incident, etc. This data enables a company to track the incidents which provides the data to support a work-around or a solution to the incident.
The ability to classify incidents is imperative to collecting accurate data. The data needs to be precise to ensure that the proper steps are taken to correct the issue or develop a work-around. Improper data could lead to unnecessary work on the processes and disruptions to the system.
Documentation of the Incident lifecycle
The ability to report on a high level on every incident in real-time, gives the distinct advantage of being able to create work-arounds or solutions faster. The Automated Management Systems allow any user to request and track incident status so each member of the team will know exactly what is being done to the final resolution of the incident. This is important because it provides a framework so steps are not overlooked or skipped when preparing the resolution.
One of the most important features of the Automated System is that it provides an integrated and searchable knowledge base that can be populated with common solutions and work-arounds to known problems. The data collected here can be used to solve new incidents that arise with common symptoms. The data collected in these systems also allows a company to manage and report on the Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) such as the number of incidents by category, resolution, priority and service level agreement.
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