Incident management

Incident management

An IT incident is any disruption to an organization's IT services that affects anything from a single user or the entire business . In short, an incident is anything that interrupts business continuity.

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What is IT incident management?

Incident management is the process of managing IT service disruptions and restoring services within agreed service level agreements (SLAs).   The scope of incident management starts with an end user reporting an issue and ends with a service desk team member resolving that issue. 

The Stages in Incident Management

Service desk teams can publish forms in t user  self-service portal to ensure that all relevant information is collected right at the time of ticket creation.  Incident categorization also helps the service desk system apply the most appropriate SLAs to incidents and communicate those priorities to end users.  Incident management process when enabled with the relevant automations allows service desk teams to keep an eye on SLA compliance and the process ensures that any IT issue affecting business continuity is resolved as  soon as possible. 

How to classify IT incidents?

 The urgency of the incident and the severity of its impact on users or the business in general.   Classifying and categorizing IT incidents helps identify and route incidents to the right technician, saving time and effort. Typically major incidents are the ones that affect business-critical services, thus affecting the entire organization, and need immediate resolutions. Minor incidents usually impact a single user or a department, and might have a documented resolution in place already.

When you don't have IT incident management in place?

Lack of transparency on ticket status and expected timelines for end users. No proper record of past incidents. Inability to document solutions for repeat or familiar issues. Higher risk of business outages, particularly with major incidents. Stretched resolution times Lack of reporting abilities. Decreased customer satisfaction

Who uses IT incident management?

Incident management practices are widely used by the IT service desk teams. Service desks are usually the single point of contact for end users to report issues to IT management teams.

The IT incident management lifecycle

Step 1 : Incident logging. Step 2 : Incident categorization. Step 3 : Incident prioritization. Step 4 : Incident assignment. 

Step 5 : Task creation and management. Step 6 : SLA management and escalation. Step 7 : Incident resolution. Step 8 : Incident closure.

Incident Workflow Diagram (image/jpeg)

Incident Workflow Diagram

Incident management life cycle

Incident logging An incident can be logged through phone calls, emails, SMS, web forms published on the self-service portal or via live chat messages.   

Incident categorization ​​​​​​​Incidents can be categorized and sub-categorized based on the area of IT or business that the incident causes a disruption in like network, hardware etc.

Incident management life cycle

Incident prioritization The priority of an incident can be determined as a function of its impact and urgency using  a priority matrix. Critical  High Medium Low    

Incident routing and assignment Once the incident is categorized and prioritized, it gets automatically routed to a technician with the relevant expertise.  Creating and managing tasks Based on the complexity of the incident, it can broken down into sub-activities or tasks. Tasks are typically created when an incident resolution requires the contribution of multiple technicians from various departments.  

Incident management life cycle

SLA management and escalation An SLA is the acceptable time within which an incident needs response (response SLA) or resolution (resolution SLA). SLAs can be assigned to incidents based on their parameters like category, requester, impact, urgency etc. In cases where an SLA is about to be breached or has already been breached, the incident can be escalated functionally or hierarcially to ensure that it is resolved at the earliest.

Incident resolution An incident is considered resolved when the technician has come up with a temporary workaround or a permanent solution for the issue.   Incident closure An incident can be closed once the issue is resolved and the user acknowledges the resolution and is satisfied with it.  

Post-incident review(Internal evaluation

Incident identification Who detected the incident and how? How soon was the incident detected after it occurred? Could the incident have been identified earlier? Could any tools or technologies have aided in the prompt or pre-emptive detection of the incident?    

Information flow and communication How quickly were the stakeholders informed about the incident? What channel was used for relaying notifications? Were all the relevant stakeholders promptly updated with the latest information? How easy was it to communicate with the end user(s) to gather information and keep them informed on the status of the ticket?