What does Closing Known Error Records Mean?

[khs666]

Within Problem Management in my company we support multiple customers with the same equipment on differing versions of software. We are currently implementing a new integrated toolset and are having a discussion we cannot solve internally:

Customer 1,2,3 raise incidents I1,I2,I3 - these raise Problem P1, which gives Known Error KE1. You produce a delta release for those customers and fix P1 on Customer sites 1,2 &3. Close Problem, KE and Incidents.

HOWEVER, you haven't fixed Customers 4,5,6 etc who may or may not have the Problem now or in the future. Do you leave the Known Error "open" or do you have the facility to search on closed or fixed Known Errors. If the latter, how do you remove Known Errors from an ever increasing database?!

All comments and help appreciated!

[mnsmith]

I personally would leave the problem and known error open, until you no longer have any clients using a version of the affected software, unless you have proof that it would only affect that particular customer.

It would make things easier if you linked your problems and known errors to specific version of your software (via the CMDB). This way you can easily see that if a customer is seeing the problem symptoms on version 1, you know that upgrading to version 1.1 will solve the problem BUT if someone on v1.2 is seeing the symptoms, you instantly know that either a) it's a different issue or b) the fix didn't work.

Hope that helps

Mick
_________________
Mick Smith
Change, Configuration and Release Manager

[Diarmid]

A proper approach to Problem management would be to fix the error for the other customers without waiting for incidents.

The other customers do not have the problem (they have the worry and pain of incidents) it is your service that has the problem.

If that is not possible for some reason then you should try to determine (perhaps by tests or analysis) whether it is possible that they may have incidents in the future. If it is possible or even if you are unsure then it would be wise to keep the problem open until such time as you can resolve it by fix or by proving that it cannot exist.
_________________
"Method goes far to prevent trouble in business: for it makes the task easy, hinders confusion, saves abundance of time, and instructs those that have business depending, both what to do and what to hope."
William Penn 1644-1718