Establish a Right-Sized Incident Management Process Resolve service issues faster and more successfully. Info-Tech's products and services combine actionable insight and relevant advice with ready-to-use tools and templates that cover the full spectrum of IT concerns.© 1997 - 2014 Info-Tech Research Group

Introduction Implementing a right-sized Incident Management process is critical to your IT department’s ability to resolve service issues. This Research Is Designed For: This Research Will Help You: Infrastructure/Operations Managers and Incident Managers who need to re-evaluate their Incident Management process, due to: Slow service restoration. Long service outages. Disruptions that adversely impact the organization. Inconsistent handling of incidents. Poor management of critical incidents. Lack of stakeholder buy-in. Assess your current process and identify critical gaps. Develop a comprehensive Incident Management SOP. Design an action plan for implementing a new Incident Management process. Improve incident resolution times. Reduce the organizational impact from service outages and disruptions.

Executive Summary ITIL provides a strong framework for Incident Management, but is does not guide you to a right-sized process model. Organizations should adapt the Incident Management process to develop procedures that are right for their organization’s needs and capabilities. Before attempting to implement or modify your Incident Management process, conduct a current state assessment that will identify gaps in your Incident Management activities. Compare your current state against the expectations and objectives identified by your organization. As you develop your Incident Management process improvement project, ensure that the new procedures address each phase of the Incident Management process. Governance: Ensure that all required activities and procedures are clearly documented in a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP). Establish clear leadership: Identify an Incident Manager to own and manage the process. Incident intake and triage: Conduct clear intake procedures and leverage a knowledgebase during triage. Classification: Develop clear incident categorization and prioritization schemes. Incident escalation: Identify your escalation paths and create workflows based on your incident categories. Investigation and diagnosis: Create procedures that allow for comprehensive incident investigations. Incident resolution: Develop resolution procedures that coordinate with Change Management and provide verification of successful service restoration. Critical incidents: Develop separate procedures for critical incidents that address: investigation, communication, resolution, and post-mortem reviews. Create a roadmap that outlines the activities and objectives for your new Incident Management process. Develop an action plan and implementation strategy that will allow you to launch your process. Successful implementation of a right-sized Incident Management process will allow your IT department to resolve incidents faster, improve your service quality, and increase customer satisfaction.

Guided Implementations for the Incident Management project Book a Guided Implementation Today: Info-Tech is just a phone call away and can assist you with your project. Our expert Analysts can guide you to successful project completion. Here are the suggested Guided Implementation points in the Incident Management project: Section 2: Perform a Gap Analysis Interpret your gap analysis and process maturity results. Review and discuss your current procedures and discuss how these practices compare to your identified target state and desired performance level. Section 4: Develop Classification and Escalation Procedures Develop your organization’s classification and escalation procedures. Discuss your organization’s current or planned categorization scheme, prioritization scheme, and the escalation paths that will be used to investigate incidents. Identify how your current ITSM tool aligns with these desired classification and incident escalation activities. This symbol signifies when you’ve reached a Guided Implementation point in your project. To enroll, send an email to GuidedImplementations@InfoTech.com or call 1-888-670-8889 and ask for the Guided Implementation Coordinator.

Guided Implementations for the Incident Management project Book a Guided Implementation Today: Info-Tech is just a phone call away and can assist you with your project. Our expert Analysts can guide you to successful project completion. Here are the suggested Guided Implementation points in the Incident Management project: Section 5: Establish Investigation, Diagnosis, and Resolution Procedures Conduct strong incident investigation, diagnosis, and resolution procedures. Discuss the procedures that will manage your incidents from investigation all the way to resolution. Section 6: Manage Critical Incidents Effectively manage your critical incidents. Review and discuss your current critical incident procedures and identify the new procedures and results desired by the organization. This discussion will focus on staff engagement procedures, a communication plan, coordination with Change Management, and post-mortem meetings. Section 7: Develop an Action Plan Develop an Action Plan for your Incident Management process. Use your process roadmap and section reviews to develop an action plan and implementation strategy for your Incident Management process. This symbol signifies when you’ve reached a Guided Implementation point in your project. To enroll, send an email to GuidedImplementations@InfoTech.com or call 1-888-670-8889 and ask for the Guided Implementation Coordinator.

Make the Case Pain points for Incident Management. Perform a Gap Analysis Conduct Intake and Initial Triage Develop Classification and Escalation Procedures Establish Investigation, Diagnosis, and Resolution Procedures Manage Critical Incidents Develop an Action Plan Pain points for Incident Management. The value of a right-sized Incident Management process.

Avoid the pains of poor Incident Management An ineffective Incident Management process will lead to lost productivity, more downtime, and higher support costs. Incidents get escalated too quickly Every time you escalate an incident the cost increases exponentially. You must determine when it is absolutely necessary to escalate. Incidents don’t get fixed properly the first time Incidents are not resolved the first time around because of process confusion and lack of expertise. This results in more lost productivity due to additional outages. Incidents are not prioritized correctly at intake Resources are not allocated to the most important or urgent issues. Incidents that have a low business impact may get fixed before higher priority incidents. It takes too long… When incidents take too long to resolve, downtime increases and user productivity decreases.

Are you suffering from these pain points? These pains will only get worse as your business grows if you don’t establish an effective process. HDI, the IT service and technical support association, reported in its 2011 Support Center Practices & Salary Report that 68% of support centers saw an increase in ticket volume in 2011. We know what needs to be done. However, there are issues because all incidents are managed independently and not documented clearly. An ad hoc environment increases the time it takes to restore the service. – Dwayne Pierre Employees are not aware of the Incident Management process. They struggle to define, recognize, and prioritize incidents. – Dennis Leon There is a lack of process. It takes longer to resolve incidents because of redundant entry. – Robert Mcilvaine

Understand the cost of downtime to the Business Take a closer look to see where you could be losing money. What does an extra hour of downtime really mean? Assume that each incident takes an extra hour to resolve as a result of an inefficient process with poor categorization, prioritization, and escalation. Consider productivity costs: Assume there are 10,000 incidents that result in an extra hour of downtime. Employees are paid an average of $56 per hour. The productivity costs would results in= $560,000. Consider labour costs of support costs: On average level 1 support makes $20 per hour. The extra hour it takes them to solve an incident would result in $200,000 per year. Your inefficient process may be costing you $760,000 annually!

Faster Higher Quality Lower Cost Establish a right-sized Incident Management process to enable faster, better quality and lower cost incident resolution Achieve operational excellence by determining the right mix of People, Process, and Technology. People Technology Process Success criteria for Incident Management: Speed Quality Cost Operational Excellence Faster Higher Quality Lower Cost

People: Improve incident resolution time by engaging the right people at the outset Level 2 Support Level 3 Support Vendors Incident Manager Faster Better Quality Lower Cost Engage the resource who has worked on similar incidents. Engage the resource with the best expertise. Faster resolution means lower support costs.

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