Root Cause List & SLA Breach Reasons

[ClausRWJensen]

Hello members of ITIL Community Forum.

I was wondering if anyone had a list of possible Root Causes? This is both for Incident and Problem Management.

Furthermore I would like to know if anyone have a list of SLA Breach Reasons?

Thanks in advance

Claus

[UKVIKING]

Sure

Here is a couple of the Root Causes
Code Description
ID10T User is an idiot
N0N3T DC tech was clumsy and unplug network cable
FR13D DC Tech was clumsy and unpluged power cable
M0R0N User does not what the service hours are
F00L User thinks we control the entire internet

Here is a couple of SLA Breach reasons

SLA broke because it was badly written
SLA is based on minutes and hours and we work using Days and weeks
SLA can never be met as 100% up time can never be achieved

ClausRWJensen: For Ghu' sake. The root causes and SLA breaches for company X may not match company B. They may use difference codes, definitions etc for the RC

Incident root causes may be different from Problem Mgmt

Have you had training in ITIL ? If so, what sort of training
_________________
John Hardesty
ITSM Manager's Certificate (Red Badge)

Change Management is POWER & CONTROL. /....evil laughter

[ClausRWJensen]

Thanks for your well qualified answer.

I know that Root Causes are different from company A and B, everyone knows that!!!

BUT companies that have been using e.g. Problem Management for a long time properly can see trends in Root Causes and thereby make groups that the Root Causes can fall under.

Have you ever considered this view?

[UKVIKING]

yes

I have considered that view

If you use Microsoft products - server o/s, server application, client apps, etc; then you may / will get a set of known errors

If your SD creates and solves incidents, then they should create their own list of closure codes

The list will be different than my company
_________________
John Hardesty
ITSM Manager's Certificate (Red Badge)

Change Management is POWER & CONTROL. /....evil laughter

[ClausRWJensen]

So what you are saying is that you do have a list of possible Root Causes? Or do you create a new Root Cause for every solved Problem?

I'm not looking for a list to adopt 100 % in my company but inspiration to create a list. One could think that every company e.g. have some technical Root Causes, User Behaviour Causes etc.

[asrilrm]

Hi,

I'll give you an illustration.
Have you ever heard of "buffer overrun"?
Consider an application system that tokens every device attached to it.
For example, if you print a document to a printer, typically a system will first send a token the the device (printer) to ask for its availability. If the printer is down (off or whatever), the system will keep on sending token periodically until the device responds.
In old client/server or mainframe architecture that handles multiple users with multiple devices attached, this would lead to catastrophic incidents.

With the above illustration, the workaround is done simply terminating the printing process. If this continues to happen, investigation would come to many root causes, f.e user forgot to turn on the printer, printer damaged, system connected to a device that no longer exist, etc. etc. The main concern is once the root cause and the resolution are established, document them. Doesn't matter if you use MS Word, Excel, Access or any DBMS.

About SLA breach reasons, if you include third party responsibilities in your SLA, you have a big chance to get breaches. Because third party performance is not within your control

Cheers,
Asril

[Diarmid]

[Caperz]

Gday mate,

Following is a list of root cause codes that i use in my organisation :

- Application : Application Error related to given service area

- Authority : Insufficient access rights to perform the task

- Capacity Management : Insufficient capacity in given service area

- Data Problem due to data quality or parameter setting

- Design : System, application or database design caused the incidents or problem

- Documentation : Following incorrect or out of date documentation was the root cause

- Environment : Natural phenomenon such as extreme weather, earthquake, tidle wave, fire, flood etc

- External Vendor : External vendor/supplier related issue where a change in their environment impacts Sandvik

- Facilities : Utilities related problem e.g. Site power outage, external telecom failure, water damage, gas explosion etc

- Hardware break : Hardware fault was the root cause

- Human error : Error caused by human

- Integration : Problems regarding integration issues in infrastucture

- Internal communication : Break down of communication between IT functions

- Planned maintenance : Scheduled change was the root cause

- Unknown : Root cause unknown

- Unplanned maintenance : Unscheduled / Emergency change was the root cause

I hope this helps
_________________
ITIL V3 Capability - Operational Support & Analysis Certified