Incident Management
ITIL® begins by defining an incident 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 then goes on to develop a working definition for Incident Management by describing its goal:
…to restore normal service operation as quickly as possible, and minimize the adverse impact on business operations, thus ensuring that the best possible levels of service quality and availability are maintained.
It is important to keep the second definition in mind to avoid confusing Incident Management with Problem Management. The former is primarily concerned with speed and restoring services to the user as quickly as possible. This will often take the form of a workaround when an unknown error is encountered. Problem Management, on the other hand, is more focused on the identification of root causes and may involve lengthy investigation or analysis. Further confusing the distinction between these two is the fact that many of the underlying processes are similar and handled by yet another Discipline, the Service Desk, which is responsible for monitoring, tracking, and communicating. Finally, there is the need for both Incident and Problem Management to interact with Configuration Items (CIs) in the Configuration Management Database (CMDB). These high level interactions are illustrated in the diagram below. more »
