Problem management

This article is about Problem Management Process, as defined by ITIL.

ITIL defines a problem as the cause of one or more incidents.

Problem Management is the process responsible for managing the lifecycle of all problems. The primary objectives of Problem Management are to prevent problems and resulting incidents from happening, to eliminate recurring incidents, and to minimize the impact of incidents that cannot be prevented.

Contents

Scope

Problem Management includes the activities required to diagnose the root cause of Incident Management and to determine the resolution to those problems. It is also responsible for ensuring that the resolution is implemented through the appropriate control procedures, especially Change Management and Release Management.

Problem Management will also maintain information about problems and the appropriate workarounds and resolutions, so that the organization is able to reduce the number and impact of Incident Management over time. In this respect, Problem Management has a strong interface with Knowledge Management, and tools such as the Known Error Database will be used for both. Although Incident Management and Problem Management are separate processes, they are closely related and will typically use the same tools, and may use similar categorization, impact and priority coding systems. This will ensure effective communication when dealing with related incidents and problems.

Value to business

Problem Management works together with Incident Management and Change Management to ensure that IT service availability and quality are increased. When incidents are resolved, information about the resolution is recorded. Over time, this information is used to speed up the resolution time and identify permanent solutions, reducing the number and resolution time of incidents. This results in less downtime and less disruption to business critical systems.

Additional value is derived from the following:

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Process activities, methods and techniques

Problem Management consists of two major processes:

Problem detection

Problem logging

All the relevant details of the problem must be recorded so that a full historic record exists. This must be date and time stamped to allow suitable control and escalation. A cross-reference must be made to the incident(s) which initiated the "Problem Record":

Problem categorization

Problems must be categorized (severity/priority) in the same way as incidents in order to trace a problem. Prioritize a problem implies to keep into account the impact of the incidents and the frequency of the occurrences. Problem priorization should take into account the severity of the problems. From an infrastructure point of view we can have:

Problem investigation and diagnosis

The result of an investigation for a problem will be a root cause diagnosis or a RCA report. The resolution should be the sum of the appropriate level of resources and skills used to find it. There are a number of useful problem solving techniques that can be used to help diagnosis and resolved problems.

The Pain Value Analysis contains a broader view of the impact of an incident or a problem on the business. Rather than analysing the number of incidents/problems of a particular type in a particular time interval, the technique focus on in-depth analysis of what level of pain has been caused to the business by these incidents/problems. A formula to calculate the level of pain should take into account:

The Kepner and Tregoe method it's used to investigate deeper-rooted problems. They defined the following stages:

Pareto Analysis is a technique for separating important potential causes from trivial issues. The following steps should be taken:

  1. Form a table listing the causes and their frequency as a percentage
  2. Arrange the rows in the decreasing order of importance of the causes (the most important cause first)
  3. Add a cumulative percentage column to the table
  4. Create a bar chart with the causes, in order of their percentage of total
  5. Draw a line at 80% on the Y-axis, then drop the line at the point of intersection with the X-axis. From the chart you can see the primary causes for the network failures. These should be targeted first.
Network failures
Causes Percentage of total Computation % Cumulative
Network Controller 35 0+35% 35
File corruption 26 35% + 26% 61
Server OS 6 61%+6% 67%

Known Error Record

After the investigation is complete and a workaround (or even a permanent solution) has been found, a Known Error Record must be raised and place in the Known Error Database in order to identify and resolve further similar problems. The main purpose is to restore the affected service as soon as possible with a minimal impact on the business.

A good practice would be to raised a Known Error Record even earlier in the investigation - just for information purposes.

Major Problem Review

A good practice is to have a review for all major problems. The review should examine:

The knowledge learned from the review should be incorporated into a service review with the business customer to ensure that the customer is aware of the actions taken and the plans to prevent future similar incidents from occurring.This helps to improve customer satisfaction and assure the business that Service Operations is handling major incidents responsibly and actively working to prevent their future recurrence.

See also

References