Incident Management Practice

Statement of Best Practice

The purpose of incident management is to restore normal service operation as quickly as possible and minimize the adverse impact of business operations, thus ensuring that agreed levels of service quality are maintained. ‘Normal service operation’ is defined as operational state where services are performing within their agreed service and operational levels.

  • Ensure that standardized methods and procedures are used for efficient and prompt response, analysis, documentation, ongoing management and reporting of incidents
  • Increase visibility and communication of incidents to business and IT support staff
  • Enhance business perception of IT through use of a professional approach in quickly resolving and communicating incidents when they occur
  • Align incident management activities and priorities with those of the business
  • Maintain user satisfaction with the quality of IT Services

Contact

  • Assistant Director, IT Process and Planning: Bob Black
  • Process Owner: Pete Ferris
  • Process Sponsor: Troy Travis

Roles and Responsibilities

  • User: consumers of an IT service or related component
  • IT Services Logger: first point of contact by a user experiencing an incident
  • IT Services Solver: experts for a particular service asset responsible for solving incidents escalated by the first point of contact
  • Process Manager: operational oversight of process activity for loggers and solvers on their team
  • Process owner: accountable for the incident management process meeting organizational goals and process targets

 

Process Step User IT Services Logger IT Services Solver Process Manager Process Owner
Incident identification R R R R A
Incident logging I R   A  
Incident categorization C R   A  
Incident prioritization C R   A  
Initial diagnosis C R   A  
Investigation and diagnosis C   R A  
Resolution and recovery C   R A  
Incident closure I   R A  
Monitors the people performing these activities for quality, etc.   C C R R/A
Monitors to ensure the process is efficient and effective   C C C R/A

Process Policies

  • Customer service must be maintained at all times.
  • Incidents and their statuses must be timely and effectively communicated.
  • Incidents are addressed within time frames acceptable to the institution.
  • All IT Services staff supporting production systems must use the incident management process for all incidents.
  • All incidents must be stored and managed in a single management system. Status and detailed information on the incident must be recorded and updated on a timely basis in incident records.
  • All incidents must use a standard classification schema that is consistent across IT Services.
  • Incident records should be audited on a regular basis to ensure that they have been entered and categorized correctly.
  • A common and agreed set of criteria for prioritizing and escalating incidents should be in place wherever possible.

Definitions 

  • Incident: unplanned interruption to or quality reduction of an IT service
  • Major Incident: Priority 1 Incident or at risk of becoming a Priority 1 Incident if unresolved
  • Service Request: a request from a user for information, advice, a standard change, or access to a service

Related Documents, Forms, and Tools 

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