Incidents
will happen; this is the unfortunate reality. The key is to manage them
effectively and wherever possible to avoid them from happening in
the first place. Since it is almost Super Bowl time I thought it was almost
fitting to use the example of a football team (yes, American football is played
with our hands). The player who is responsible for facilitating and coordinates
the plays on the field is the quarterback (QB). Their function is to move the
football towards the end zone (business outcome) more times than the other
teams (your competition) to win the game. During the course of the game they
will have to adjust for setbacks such as fumbles, interceptions etc.
Think
about your current service management organization. Does it have a centralized
incident “player” like the QB? Or is this role managed by your operations teams
when incidents occur? How this is done is not nearly as important as the
perceptions around the Incident process. Quite often the resolution of
incidents is met with acclaim for the "team who has restored service” (use
booming voice over). People often congratulate the firefighter, but think of it
this way, if the fire department was required to come out to put out a fire 3
times in a month people would start to wonder what was going on. The same is
true for your services.
Whoever
is quarterbacking your incident team should understand that the value is not
necessarily as much in the resolution of incidents as it is in understanding
the root cause. Granted root cause is obviously better managed through problem,
but we all desire the best service possible. The challenge is that culturally
we tend to reward where we “see” value. You might hear “last month we reduced
incidents,” or “our Incident team helped facilitate a quick resolution on this
issue”. While this is important we need to start building a capability to
address the problems which are impacting our services.
A
part of the game of football also includes a halftime. This is when there is a halftime
show; people get more beer, and so on. The real purpose is to allow time for
the teams to regroup in the locker room to review the game play in the first
half. The coach will likely go over what went well and in some cases what
didn't. Much like CSI, the team is always looking to improve their performance
going into the second half of the game. It is equally important to take times
where your incidents can be reviewed by your either your service management or
operational teams, or both. To improve on your delivery of services performing
a review of this nature on a regular basis will better position your team to
determine a strategy to reach your service management end zone.
Labels: Incident Management, ITIL, ITSM, Problem Management, Service Management
