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What is incident management in ITIL?

Blog: Good eLearning

What is an incident?

In IT Service Management (ITSM), an ‘incident’ refers to an unplanned event or service interruption. ‘Incident management’ is about detecting, reporting, monitoring, and managing incidents to minimize and prevent service downtime. With so many key business functions powered by IT services, even a single incident can cause significant problems if handled incorrectly.

In ITIL, incident management covers all incidents, whether they only impact a single user or an entire business. This also applies to relatively minor incidents that may not stop services from running entirely but still limit functions and usability.

In ITIL v3, incident management is defined as “any event which is not part of the standard operation of a service and which causes, or may cause, an interruption to, or a reduction in, the quality of that service.”

ITIL incident management is also separate from ‘Problem Management’:

Incident management – A reactive practice designed to restore service continuity. Speed is vital, and incident management teams will often utilize temporary fixes to get services running again.
Problem management – A proactive practice that focuses on either finding long-term solutions or preventing problems from reoccurring.

How does ITIL incident management work?

ITIL 4 lists incident management as one of its Service Management Practices. Practitioners log, record, and resolve issues across an organization. This may also be handled by the service desk with a dedicated incident management team. A company may utilize incident management tools to facilitate reporting and support the service desk.

The framework does not recommend a prescriptive approach to incident management. Instead, it advises practitioners to design a process for managing incidents based on the requirements of their company. This requires a firm understanding of the ITIL 4 framework, as well as a company’s structure, goals, and ITSM practices.

One could describe the incident management workflow as broadly covering the basics. These include:

Detecting and recording incidents
Matching incidents with other known problems
Resolving incidents
Prioritizing incidents based on impact and urgency
Escalating complex incidents to other teams when necessary
Detecting and recording incidents
Classifying incidents and providing initial support
Investigating and diagnosing incidents
Resolving incidents and implementing recovery
Closing incidents
Owning, monitoring, tracking, and communicating incidents

Because incident management is treated as a holistic issue, incidents can be reported by a variety of sources. These can include:

Customers
Clients
Stakeholders
Internal users
Support staff
Third-party suppliers or partners
Technical staff

In a setup like this, there are several key roles and functions:

Support groups, including first, second, and third-line support. This can also include any external supplier
Incident manager, the manager responsible for implementing the incident management process and the first stage for escalation
Service desk manager, the manager of day-to-day service desk activities, and a point of contact for both internal users and clients. They will also act as a liaison for business programs when necessary and will make sure all incident report tickets are handled quickly

Notably, ITIL does not offer detailed procedures for diagnosing, investigating, and resolving incidents. The desk may also utilize provided scripts containing relevant information for diagnosing and resolving incidents.

If an incident is particularly complex or disastrous, it will be escalated and dealt with by support teams with more specialist knowledge and expertise. Examples could include incidents that have a large impact on security or customer data.

What are the benefits of ITIL incident management?

There are several benefits to having dedicated ITIL incident management practices at an organization:

Service availability – When businesses rely on services for value generation, they cannot afford downtime. Having incident management practices in place ensures that any issues can be detected and resolved as quickly as possible. The service desk will also keep solutions on file for repeated incidents and make ‘temporary’ solutions long-term if necessary.
Staff availability – Incident management can be made much more efficient with dedicated tools and software. This also applies to areas like capacity and performance management. Without having to manually monitor and resolve incidents, your team will have more time to boost productivity elsewhere.
Productivity – With reduced downtime for essential services, a business can enjoy much higher levels of productivity. This can also be a major USP when offering services to potential clients.
User satisfaction – Naturally, service availability is pretty key for keeping customers happy, though this applies to employees too. By preventing downtime and other frustrating errors, you can ensure a higher level of user satisfaction.
Service levels – In some cases, maintaining the quality and availability of a service is not a matter of choice. Having incident management practices in place can be vital for meeting the terms of a Service Level Agreement (SLA). You can even use your practices to impress clients with how potential issues will be swiftly and effectively dealt with, especially if you have high-quality software and tools to back it up.
Response times – By following ITIL best practices for incident management, you can create standardized processes for responding to, analyzing, managing, reporting, and documenting incidents. Having this in place will vastly improve response times as well as service availability.
Visibility – Incident management requires visibility throughout an organization. This helps staff decide how to allocate resources effectively. Having a visible incident management team with clear processes will also help throughout the business, as staff will know how to escalate and report potential issues.

Studying ITIL incident management

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