ITIL Incident Management – Roles and Implementation process
For an IT organization it is critically important to successfully implement right-sized incident management process. An unsuccessful incident management process will decrease the productivity and increase the downtime and support cost.
The implementation process has to be in place for keeping the service up and running. ITIL lifecycle involves roles from different groups and support teams within an organization. An incident manager is responsible for implementing the process and coordinating activities between different team to ensure that they adhere to the agreed service level timeframe agreement.
Roles and functions involved in the Incident management process are -
First Level Support - Service Desk:
They are the only point of contact for the users. They are non-technical person having sufficient business knowledge. Their tasks include
-
Logging the incidents in the tool
-
Performing initial diagnosis and trouble-shooting
-
Directing the incident to next support level
-
Regularly monitoring and if required escalating to higher level
-
Tracking the incident and following up with the concerned team on incident status
-
Updating the incident log and the users with the status
-
Closing incidents once the user expectations are met
Second Level Support - Technical Team:
The technical team has the same objective as that of the service desk – to restore the service as quickly as possible, but they are technically strong with vast business and functional knowledge.
Third Level Support – Hardware/Software Team:
There support is requested by the technical team if they find that the issue is due to hardware or software fault. It includes support from network, voice, server, desktop, database or environment team.
Additionally, few other support teams and groups – access, facility, change and problem management are consulted if required. Before implementing the process ensure the availability of the required budget and resources.
Steps for setting up the incident management process
-
Implement Service desk
-
Make proper arrangements of the interface between the incident management and the service desk
-
Define business objectives and goals
-
Involve technical IT staff
-
Plan necessary business and incident management training for service desk and all involved staff and groups. Ensure that the team is aware of the incident escalation process
-
Setup priorities and decide what to measure
-
Maintain a log or register with the contact details of the support groups and their respective point of escalation
-
Ensure that the set targets are met
-
Generate and circulate monthly reports and metrics on the number of incidents logged and time taken to resolve them
-
Create plan, policies and procedures to protect the organization from incident attack
-
Monitor and review the process regularly
-
Conduct seminar sessions/conferences with quality management team to review performance reports
-
Conduct proper knowledge sharing sessions with the team
-
Conduct quiz sessions to make the team aware and update with the process
Post implementations ensure that the user/business needs are met. Surveys can be done to monitor user’s perception and expectation. Design a survey template that is easy to complete and decide the target audience. Conduct the survey regularly and make sure that the user understands the benefits. Publish results and work on areas that need improvement.