Questions on Incident Classification

[fralaw]

Dear ITIL gurus,

I learn about ITIL while I am trying to find a good classification of issues. In one of the article "8 Steps to Better Incident Classification" by Hank Marquis in 2006, it mentions that ITIL has described 3 types of incidents:
1) Fault
2) Service Request
3) Assistance Enquiry

and 7 categories:
1) Hardware
2) Software
3) Network
4) People
5) Process
6) Accommodation
7) Documentation

It has also mentioned an attribute called "Sub-category" with examples:
- Hardware: Workstation, printer, monitor, phone, etc.
- Software: Order Entry, AR/AP, etc.
- Accommondation: Moves, Adds, Changes, etc.

So, my questions are:
1. Are these classifications really defined in ITIL? I have no access to the ITIL publication yet.
2. Are these categories applied to all 3 types of incident? If not, does ITIL define the categories for the other 2 types of incidents?
3. What is the "Accommodation" category? I am confused by the examples.
4. Is there Subcategories defined in ITIL?
5. Which category does "Operating System" or "Security Patch" fitted into?

Thank you in advance for your advise.

Regards,
Francis

[Diarmid]

Francis,

these classifications are examples of possible classification schemes. ITIL does not prescribe anything and therefore if you use these or other classifications you must define for yourself what they mean.

It is, of course generally a very good idea (ITIL best practice) to classify incidents in some way, in order to better manage and analyse your service performance.

so the answers to your questions are as follows:

1. No.
2. No and no.
3. Whatever you want it to be.
4. No.
5. whatever one (or more than one) that you want it to.

Personally I don't like to refer to service requests or assistance enquiries (information requests) or (a fourth possible group) change requests as incidents. The reason that some people do is because of the way that their service desk software (or their implementation of it) likes to lump everything that gets recorded as an incident. I like to reserve the word incident for service abberations.
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"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