Incident Closure Question

[valkner]

Hello All,

If the description of an incident is the following: An incident is a threatening disturbance of an agreed service.

If I log an incident to the Service Desk, telling them my service is disturbed (eg. an application not working, or a functionality not working,....), and I get the response the issue will be resolved in the next release of my application -> Can the incident then be closed ?

ITIL theory says Nay but how do you handle such a ticket if you know people are measured in our organisation by open tickets (Dura Lex, Sed Lex).

Although I am in favour of the ITIL approach, it is hard to tell the people otherwise, especially if their career depends on it.

Help ? - Theory is not always a fine answer for all kinds of questions.

Bart Van Brabant

[rjp]

Sigh! Once again service quality buts up against labour reduction metrics....

I say a thousand times nooooooooo! (Waves fist in air). Setting targets and KPIs are two different things. Using personal KPIs to achieve process KPI targets is bad bad bad...

For just the kind of reason you state here: The variables that govern 'performance' are outside the control of the 'performee'. It just creates stress and bad practice. IMHO should be agin the law...

Answer, stop using that metric as an individual performance measure. It is a process metric, no, wait, it is an organisation metric other processes contribute to the outcome you are identifying in the closure levels.

However, if your hands are tied then either see if you can apply a special status like 'pending', or get your staff evaluations shifted to performance based on 'resolved' or worst case set them to closed.

In the end staff morale and effectiveness will have a bigger input into your overall service quality contribution than having a percentage of your incidents incorrectly closed.

[valkner]

Thanks Rich - that closes the topic (for me anyway)

Bart