Problem & incident manager (role & responsibilities)

[ecadre]

Hi,
I am new in this forum (and my first post)

Recently I read ITIL material about incident and problem management however has difficulty to imagine it in real world practice (I still learning...).

Suppose that we have a IT division consists of 4 groups :
1. Application Development Group
2. Infrastructure Group
3. Service and Support Group
4. Help Desk

If we must to assign an incident manager, could it be assigned to our help desk manager? or incident manager is dynamically assigned to persons depending on the incident and their skills?

Could application development manager be also our problem manager?

Second, about the process itself. When user sent a service request ticket, helpdesk team will try to solve it. If helpdesk unable to solve it, then it will be assigned to application, infrastructure, or service support group (a temporary taskforce consist of member of the 3 groups could be assembled if necessary).

The team then try to find a workaround, close the ticket, and then try to find a permanent solution. But does this process mean the same persons could handle both of problem & incident?

Thanks in advance, I really appreciated any help!


Regards


Alan

[Diarmid]

The answers are all yes, but there is more to it.

Managing an incident, or a change or a problem is a function.You would always want to assign someone to the role who has the skills and capability to do it and you would have to ensure they had the authority as well.

It is also best if there is no potential conflict between their activities in that role and any other role they have, or at least to be sure that such potential conflict is recognized and managed.

Unless you have a large organization then roles will have to be shared in some way. It is perfectly reasonable, for example, for the same technical staff to perform tasks in incident resolution (being governed by your incident management procedure/s) and to perform tasks in problem investigation and resolution (governed by your problem management procedure/s).

In all cases you just have to think through what will work for your organization. Set up someone (ideally your Quality Manager ) to be responsible for the development and maintenance of your processes, develop policies as to how your system will work, provide clear objectives and performance measures and plunge in.
[sorry, I've been working too hard today]
_________________
"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

[ecadre]

Hi, thanks for your help. It's clear for me now

Both incident & problem must be recorded, however somehow for the problem that came from incident have an exact information in database. It's OK to have a duplicate record?

Also, I read from ITIL book that incident & problem manager shouldn't be assigned to 1 person. Kindly could you tell me how incident & problem manager (of different person) get assigned and working together in large organization. (on my small company, Incident & problem manager are always the same person)

Thanks for your help

[Diarmid]

I don't believe an incident and a problem could ever have an identical record.

1. The incident record will have information relating to the time of the incident, the source of the report of the incident, details of who and how affected, the impact of the incident, etc.etc.

2.(and fundamentally) the problem will want to state that there is some cause (as yet possibly unknown) of one or more incidents with the following symptoms and it will refer to the incident record(s).

So:
incident - user unable to print document due to printer malfunction
problem - printer failed for unknown reason or - printer failed for known reason which requires remedying to prevent future failures.

The problem record will contain links to all related incidents so that, amongst other important reasons, problem analysis has correct information on the CIs related to the problem and to the circumstances of the incidents.
_________________
"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

[ecadre]

Dear Diarmid,

thanks for you explanation, now it's clear for me

regards

alan