Problem Fix timescales

shakeyguy · Newbie Joined: Oct 25, 2006 Posts: 4 Location: Canada

Hello everyone!!

I am looking for examples of Problem ticket fix timescales. Does anyone have information that they would like to share??

Thanks
Shakeyguy

UKVIKING · Posted: Wed Nov 28, 2007 7:03 pm Post subject:

Problem management is NOT about fixing something. That is Incident Management

problem mgmt is abotu finding out why. Sometimes this can take hours, days, weeks/

There should not be a break fix sla or ola attached to problem mgmt

it is pointless
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John Hardesty
ITSM Manager's Certificate (Red Badge)

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

PEISunshine · Newbie Joined: Oct 19, 2007 Posts: 1

I agree, setting expectations for fixing Problems within a preset amount of time is setting yourself up for failure. There will be a percentage of your problem records that don't get closed for months and years. The reason being that it doesn't always make good business sense to spend the time and money on a Problem that has a minimal impact on your customers. For example, spending 2 million on a Problem that is only impacting a handful of users and not to the point where SLAs are in jeopardy, may not be the right thing to do for the business or the customer.

Mark-OLoughlin · Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2007 2:21 am Post subject:

I would run an SLA against Service Calls and Incidents but not problems.

I would use problem management to help identify the time a service/ci was unavailable and feed that into availability management / Service Level Management and track the mean / average time of problems before they are resolved (resolved=workaround in place). This gives a picture of how long it takes on average to get a workaroud in place. Again I would not have an SLA on this but use it a benchmark.

A problem can be in a resolved state for a long time before a solution is put in place when the problem can then be closed.
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Mark O'Loughlin
ITSM / ITIL Consultant

shakeyguy · Newbie Joined: Oct 25, 2006 Posts: 4 Location: Canada

Do you have suggestions on what to measure to provide good control over the problem management process?

ex. ensure that the problems are actively being worked on if they are not in a stalled status.

Mark-OLoughlin · Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2007 3:42 am Post subject:

A correction on my last post. I would run an SLa against a problem from the time it was opened to the time that a workaround was put in place or an immediate solution. From the time the problem is in any "open" status tot he time it is set to "Resolved" status is open for SLA measurement to ensure that a workaround is put in place at the least to assist incident management.
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Mark O'Loughlin
ITSM / ITIL Consultant

eisbergsk · Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2007 6:56 am Post subject:

There are always lots of suggestions on what to change to close an identified problem, mostly involving work by 'someone else'......
I would ask that any suggestions be achievable within 3 months. or 6. by quarters, anyway. That can sometimes help get past well-meaning but mostly useless suggestions. It can be useful for reports, too.
Why 3 months? Seemed to be acceptable to programmers who have to examine the code, design the changes, test, test, test, schedule the changes, implement the changes and update the documentation (not necessarily in that order).
If I wanted a job where I would make recommendations, and then came around every week asking 'are you done yet?', I would have become a Project manager, not a Problem manager (tongue in cheek, y'all!)
/Sharon
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In practice, there is!

jmc724 · Newbie Joined: Nov 06, 2007 Posts: 14

Well, once a possible fix has been identified it needs to be resolved asap. Since PM could coordinate root causes of known issues and maintains a known issue DB, then its their jobs to work with the different teams for find what is the issue and how soon it can be resolved. Most of this is captured by a problem mgmt charter which would be similar to a project management schedule. Again you dont want to have an issue lingering for a very long time as to it creates a nuisance and hindrance to end users more so than you think and in many organizations these problem tickets are highly visible.

Mark-OLoughlin · Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2007 2:54 am Post subject:

Hi

"Well, once a possible fix has been identified it needs to be resolved asap"

Quite right. But this does nto necessarliy mean that a permanent solution has been found. Depending on the type of org you could be waiting months or longer to be able to get the solution identified, developed, tested and finally into prod. I know as I was PM for one suck org who used release cycles to get in permanent solutions for problems that kept being "resolved" with workarounds and sticky plasters. It actually worked but meant a build up of problems over the year(s).
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Mark O'Loughlin
ITSM / ITIL Consultant

jmc724 · Newbie Joined: Nov 06, 2007 Posts: 14

Mark,

What makes the resolution to the problem different than a software defect/project that will be put in prod that requires immediate implementation via an emer?

Mark-OLoughlin · Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2007 3:20 am Post subject:

Thats what I am saying. In one particular org there was no immediate emergency solution implemented. Just workaround after workoround. While the workarounds "resolved" the problem they were not the "Solution" as they were always temporary "fixes".

The solutions were implemented months(or longer) down the line. Their business accepted this (mayhem) due to the way that any solutions would affect the code that developers were using to develop more applications and functionality. So in effect we were locked out of making permament changes to implement permanent solutions until such time as we got the solution into a release program and it got implemented.

This may not be a so typical situation.
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Mark O'Loughlin
ITSM / ITIL Consultant

Mark-OLoughlin · Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2007 3:21 am Post subject:

...btw, I don't get emailed when updates are made to posts that I contribute to. Is this feature ment to work. Does it work for you?
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Mark O'Loughlin
ITSM / ITIL Consultant

jmc724 · Newbie Joined: Nov 06, 2007 Posts: 14

Understood, I call those temp solutions 'Bandaiding.'

UKVIKING · Posted: Mon Dec 03, 2007 7:18 pm Post subject:

I am sorry. We are not funding any musical groups at this time.
.............fdl...............

That aside,

What PM statistics should look like is something like the following

The PM team should determine whether the root cause is in the company end or the vendor end.

If the solution for the problem is

Problem: Blue Screen Days every 3 days on all Microsoft Windows NT 3.52 servers
Solution: 1 - Upgrade to next release
constraint: internal application code not supported in NT 4.0, 2000, 2003

This should what shoudl be reported on by PM
_________________
John Hardesty
ITSM Manager's Certificate (Red Badge)

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

mitter · Itiler Joined: Dec 06, 2007 Posts: 21

UKVIKING

what activities would you monitor to ensure that the process is operating effeciently?

ex. Problem ticket has been opened for a long time with no recent information or updates. Do you not want to set targets for escalation purposes?


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