Problem Trend Analysis

[darkstar]

Hi

First post here on my first day on the site, so please forgive me if this topic has been done to death before in the past.

I'm interested how other Problem Managers conduct Trend Analysis and what techniques they use. Personally, I'm a big fan of extracting the data into a spreadsheet and running pivot tables against the data. I look for common cause codes, timings, brief descriptions and keywords.

How does everybody else go about this?

[TrojanMouse]

Hi darkstar,

I also use pivot tables and find them an effective method for trend analysis on large volumes of Incident data.

I've also used Netcool reporter to identify trends within webhosting infrastructures.

TM

[m_croon]

Hi Darkstar,

I think you are touching on one of the weaker parts of ITIL/Problem management. It tells you what to do (solve the root cause) yet it is not very clear on how to do this.

Why don't you google on Kepner-Tregoe. This is a company which has developed ATS, which stands for Analytic Trouble Shooting. This will not tell you how to best design your excel spreadsheet, but (as the name says) it will help you yo structurally analyse a problem till you realy hit the bottom of it.

Hope this helps,

Michiel