Establish a Right-Sized Incident Management Process

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Service restoration for incidents is too slow.
Incident treatments and attempts at service restorations do not completely resolve the issue.
Service disruptions and outages are prolonged due to an informal and inefficient Incident Management process.
Confusion and mismanagement of critical incidents prolong service impacting outages that dramatically undermine the operational abilities of the organization.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

ITIL’s Incident Management process is not a one-size-fits-all framework.
Adapt your Incident Management roadmap and develop a process that is right for your organization.
A right-sized process, not the most complex process, will allow you to experience the strongest returns.

Impact and Result

Service outages and disruptions will have smaller organizational impact as a result of more targeted and efficient Incident Management.
Develop a strong Incident Management process that will prepare your staff to manage all incidents that could be experienced within IT Infrastructure or Applications.

Establish a Right-Sized Incident Management Process Research & Tools

1. Make the case for a right-sized Incident Management process

Determine what target state best fits the organization considering its level of investment and staff capabilities.

2. Identify process gaps

Assess process completeness and determine what areas will require process improvement efforts and investments.

3. Conduct intake and initial triage

Select incident detection practices and develop a knowledgebase.

4. Develop classification and escalation procedures

Establish an incident prioritization scheme and identify incident escalation paths and time frames.

5. Establish investigation, diagnosis, and resolution procedures

Formalize a right-sized process for Incident Management and document it in a Standard Operating Procedure.

6. Manage critical incidents

Establish a specific set of procedures for managing critical incidents.

7. Build an action plan

Develop and formalize a roadmap to launch the process and achieve your target state.

Workshop: Establish a Right-Sized Incident Management Process

Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

Module 1: Make the Case for a Right-Sized Incident Management Process

The Purpose

Identify Incident Management pain points.
Define your Incident Management process.

Key Benefits Achieved

Understanding of the objectives and focus points of the workshop.

Activities

Outputs

1.1

Define workshop objectives

Formalized workshop objectives

1.2

Define pain points

Identified pain points

1.3

Define Incident Management

Incident Management definition

Module 2: Perform a Gap Analysis

The Purpose

Determine your Incident Management process maturity.
Identify the organization’s Incident Management target state.
Perform a current state and gap analysis assessment.
Identify Incident Management roles and responsibilities.

Key Benefits Achieved

Determine your process gaps and target plans for your right-sized Incident Management.

Activities

Outputs

2.1

Conduct a maturity assessment

Maturity assessment

2.2

Select your target state

Target state

2.3

Perform a gap analysis

Gap analysis

2.4

Identify roles and responsibilities

Roles and responsibilities

Module 3: Design Your Incident Management Process

The Purpose

Develop procedures for successful end-to-end management of incidents.
Determine methods and tools for investigating incidents.
Plan course of action for managing incident outcomes.

Key Benefits Achieved

Documented procedures for:
- Incident intake
- Classification
- Escalation
- Investigation and diagnosis
- Resolution
- Understanding of knowledgebase opportunities
- Initial triage
Identification of incident investigation methods and diagnostic tools.

Activities

Outputs

3.1

Define SOPs for each phase of Incident Management.

SOPs for: incident intake, initial triage, classification, escalation, investigation and diagnosis, and resolution.

3.2

Determine knowledgebase capabilities.

Knowledgebase Action Plan

3.3

Plan incident investigation methods.

Investigation methods and tools

3.4

Determine investigation tools.

3.5

Define the coordination between Incident and Change Management during incident resolutions.

Module 4: Plan Your Critical Incident Process

The Purpose

Determine how your organization will manage critical incidents.
Develop procedures for managing critical incidents.
Identify staff engagement and resourcing plans.
Develop a post-implementation review process.

Key Benefits Achieved

More effective management of critical incidents:
- Faster response times.
- Reduced confusion and more decisive decision making.
Shorter outages and reduced organizational impact from critical incidents.

Activities

Outputs

4.1

Develop SOPs for critical incidents.

Completed SOPs for critical incidents
Process for managing critical incidents

4.2

Create a resource engagement plan.

Formal resource engagement plan

4.3

Establish post-mortem reviews.

Post-mortem review process

Module 5: Build an Action Plan

The Purpose

Plan and finalize a roadmap for implementing and optimizing a right-sized Incident Management process.
Establish KPIs and metrics for monitoring your process.

Key Benefits Achieved

A plan for implementing your designed Incident Management process.
Identification of KPIs and metrics to ensure process adherence and improved service performance.

Activities

Outputs

5.1

Develop your Incident Management roadmap.

Formal action plan and roadmap

5.2

Determine process KPIs.

Identified Incident Management KPIs

Establish a Right-Sized Incident Management Process visualization

Resolve service issues faster and more successfully.

About Info-Tech

Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.

We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.

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A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.

Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.

Table of Contents

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Call 1: 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.
Call 2: 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.
Call 3: 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.
Call 4: 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.
Call 5: 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.