Management of technical incidents
Introduction
Incident management is a process area belonging to the management of information technology services. The first objective of incident management is to recover the usual level of service operation and minimize the negative impact on the organization as much as possible so that service quality and availability are maintained.
Definition
ITIL terminology defines an incident as:
Known Incidents, Issues, and Bugs
An incident can be a “known problem” (failure without a known source) or a “known error” (failure with a known source) under the control of problem management and recorded in the known error database.
In the event that some problem-solving strategies have been determined, access to them by the technical service will allow greater speed when solving them. When an incident is not the result of a known problem or known error, it may be a one-time failure or it may be necessary to begin problem management, so that this incident is recorded for future reference.
Incidents and changes
Incidents are the result of failures or errors in the IT infrastructure. The cause of the incidents may be apparent and can be solved without the need for future investments, through a repair or a change request to solve the error.
When an incident is considered serious, or multiple cases of similar incidents are observed, a problem log may be created (the problem may not be recorded until the same incident has been repeated several times). Managing a problem is different from incident management, it is developed in another work team and is controlled through problem management. When a problem has been identified and the solution is not known, the problem becomes a “known problem.” After identifying the cause of the problem, it becomes a “known error.” Finally a change request can be made to resolve the error. From this point on, the project is the responsibility of change management.
A request for a new service is not classified as an incident, but as a change request.