Problem Management Inputs

[entivo]

Section 6.2 (p95) of the blue book lists one of the inputs of Problem Management as "Configuration details from the CMDB".

What does this mean?

[kinger]

[troy23]

The CMDB should hold information about the CI's, e.g. incident and change records as well as the relationships with other CIs. All of which are very useful for problem management trending. E.g. a certain change to the CI, or a change to a related CI, both of could cause incidents. Definitely making trending and problem analysis a lot easier!!

[Brian1]

Two cents here... I am just beginning to develop the PM process at our organization and I recently presented the following inputs as part of the scope for our process.

Reactive:
1. Major incidents
2. Incidents as a result of Change (failed change)
3. Incidents as a aresult of Project (failed project)
4. Customer complaints (yes this is part of problem management)

Proactive:
1. Incident ticket trends
2. Change ticket trends
3. process trends
4. CMDB (use data mining efforts to identify trends or anamoloies about your CI's - physical and logical)

Hope this helps.

[asrilrm]

Hi Brian,

I agree with your post, and I think you've given an excellent example.

However, I'm just concern about "process trend" being one of the proactive PM inputs. Could you describe furthermore what you meant with it?

Cheers,
Asril

[Brian1]

Once you have implemented a process it is important to supplement the process with continuous improvement. One of the things I am doing with problem management is to analyze these requests to understand what is being asked for and why so that this can be used as input to processes yet to be developed. I am also looking to understand our willingness to change (i.e. how many requests were accepted, why were they accepted or why were they not?) One of the great things about proactive problem management is that you are essentially data mining to identify trends and issues that are not readily apparent. I believe problem management (the proactive part) can quantitatively teach us a lot about how we operate as a business, information which senior management can use to affect strategic change to better the IS organization.

Hope this helps explain.

[asrilrm]

Brian,

I see.
Well, as you've mantioned "process trends", I assumed that ITIL processes were included, while the processes improve themselves as they run. I mean there are lessons learned in each process reviews.
Other processes also have their ways to improve like using the TQM.

I just don't want process owners to develop a habit of thinking "Oh, we have the proactive problem management who takes care of improvement so let them do it". Funny, isn't it?

Cheers,
Asril

[Brian1]

Hi Asril,

Agreed. It is not Problem Management's role, responsibility or accountability for leading continuous improvement. If you are a v2 ITIL shop then it is up to each process manager to manage this on their own and if you are v3 ITIL shop then continuous improvement is a foundation process and this process will enable a consistent approach and application of continuous improvement that can be monitored and audited if needed.

Now all that said, for problem management, we are interested in the data created by continuous improvement so that it can be analyzed as I mentioned before.

Thanks for helping me clarify this point.