Service Operation: Incident Management

Incident Management?

The process responsible for managing the lifecycle of all incidents. Incident Management ensure that normal service operation is restored as quickly as possible and the business impact is minimized.

WHAT IS Incident?

An unplanned interruption to an IT service or reduction in the quality of an IT service.

The Purpose and Importance of Incident Management

Each stage of the entire ITIL Service Lifecycle provides value to the business in one way or another. Service Operation delivers both long term incremental and short term ongoing improvements. The primary goal of the Incident Management process is to restore normal service operation as quickly as possible. When successfully implemented, Incident Management offers the following types of benefits:

• Reducing unplanned IT service staff costs by reducing the number of Incident tickets

• Decreasing business and user downtime with faster Incident detection and resolution

• Increasing productivity across the organization by restoring normal operation quickly

• Identifying training opportunities and potential service improvements

• Improving user satisfaction

• Demonstrating IT’s value to the business by aligning IT activities to business priorities

• Reducing the impact on the business and user with improved monitoring

• Reducing lost Incidents

The Incident Management Process (Also Known as the Incident Management Lifecycle)

• Incident identification

• Incident logging

• Incident investigation and diagnosis

• Incident assignment or escalation

• Incident resolution

• Incident closure

• User satisfaction survey

Incident Management Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Measurements are important across all stages of the ITIL lifecycle. Each process has metrics that should be monitored and reported to effectively evaluate the overall performance. Continuous Service Improvement necessitates that the performance of each process be measured to identify areas needing improvement.

Typical Incident Management metrics include:

• Total Incidents reported (per category, priority, person, organizational unit, etc.)

• Status of Incidents

• Time between Incident creation and resolution

• Incidents and SLA (reached, breached)

• Average cost per Incident

• Reopen rate

• Incidents handled without escalation

• First call resolution

• Configuration Items experiencing recurring Incidents

• Incidents by time of day