The pervasive and rapidly changing nature of IT is bound to create Problems & Incidents. How organization react, respond, resolve, review & report to PIM is increasingly an important attribute to optimize business processes. Problem management is generally a proactive action while Incident Management is an reactive action.
Without an organized, single point of productive collaborative process to assist & advice users when problems and incidents arise, businesses cannot respond quickly and efficiently to their delivery of services, thus affecting availability and survivability.
ITIL defines PIM as follow – Problem Management investigates the underlying cause of incidents, and aims to prevent incidents of a similar nature from recurring. By removing errors, which often requires a structural change to the IT infrastructure in an organization, the number of incidents can be reduced over time. The main difference between Incident Management and Problem Management is that the former deals with fighting symptoms to incidents, while the latter seeks to remove the causes of incidents permanently from the IT infrastructure.
PIM process can be defined uniquely by the 5 R’s – in developing a framework for PIM & growth; as follows;
- React – How do you react to Problems & Incidents (PI)? Do you have a Help Desk Ticketting system?
- Respond – How do you respond to PI? Are PI issues recorded and categorized in the ticketting system?
- Resolve – How is PI resolved? Is approval needed for resolution?
- Review – How often is PI reviewed for completenes? Is service quality and time taken measured?
- Report – How is reporting of PIM structured? Is PI progress updates periodically monitored?
Collaboration and Communication are the two key factors in managing the 5 R’s. Even with the best technology, when it comes to a serious IT disruption, many organizations face the simple problem of “one hand not really knowing what the other hand is doing.”. In addition it must be noted that the Backup & Recovery process is critical in serious IT problems and incidents (those that result in data loss).
In addition accurately measuring PIM performance is challenging. Statistics that seem impressive at first glance are often misleading when examined more closely. Looking beyond an agent’s answered calls , average call time and closed tickets is critical.
The backup and restore process is a critical attribute in the availability of IT. Unfortunately, backup and restore processes rarely evolve with IT infrastructures, leaving organizations exposed and vulnerable. This exposure is not usually recognized until it’s too late or when a media recovery fails.
Many potential reasons for failure can cause business critical applications to go offline and endanger a company’s viability. A comprehensive business continuity solution includes not only the capacity to recover operations after a major disaster, but also the capacity to remain online during minor disruptions.
With new legislation in the area of data retention, such as Sarbanes Oxley and new anti-trust legislation, an organization has to have formal data retention policies, including email archiving and be able to recover & maintain data integrity. The complexity, and related cost, of back-up procedures and systems may well depend upon the identified speed with which systems or business processes need to be restored.
A written plan for resuming information processing activities in the event of a disaster should be developed and periodically tested. An arrangement for an alternate site is needed in the event the computer facility is inoperable or destroyed in a disaster and the following broad areas should be considered as part of this:
- Alternative business process handing
- IT Systems back-up and recovery
- Premises and essential equipment back-up and recovery
- Customer service back-up and recovery
- Administration and operations back-up and recovery
- Information and documentation back-up and recovery
- Insurance Coverage & Analysis of cumulative downtime
We think a BR Audit can add value. A BR Audit can help an organization assess the impact of legislation, changes in technology, backup architectures, corporate requirements and best practices.
Note: The state of data protection is in flux. Conventional models of backup and restore have become obsolete and are being replaced by newer dynamic paradigms that involve disk-to-disk, virtual server provisioning, sophisticated data deduplication, and appliance-based operations.