Starting with Incident

[Timo]

(not a question, just sharing some thoughts from my most recent experience)

Funny how a lot of improvement opportunities when analyzed lead back to the basics - incident management process.

Started out with examination of KPIs because new boss wanted the KPIs. Right or wrong he wanted the KPIs in the areas of availability, capacity and resource management. Fine. The more we talked about what our KPIs should be and how they are to be implemented, the more we kept coming back to poor practices (or lack of certain practices altogether) related to Incident management.

For the KPIs identified for avail and cap Incident would be the first stop to collect the right data, to have that we need proper procedures, roles and tools in place. In the end - new project, IM process

Aaaah... I have been vindicated. My nagging about analyzing what we've got first instead of diving head first into KPIs in the areas that we didn't even know why we were touching to begin with has finally paid off. While there is no denying avail and cap are important to this organization, however, there are more pressing underlying areas to deal with.

The crap part is that now I am given a PM hat.

[BorisBear]

Its always easiest to start with the reactive side of management

[Diarmid]

Of course, when you come to analyse what to do to improve incident management, you will probably discover that you are handicapped by deficiency in your approach to change management and realize you have to start there.

When you look at change management you will discover problems with your understanding and control of services and their relationships and you will have to start with service catalogue ... and configuration ... and ... well you know how it is.

It is fairly certain that most areas of service management affect most aspects of service delivery either directly or indirectly.

It pays to start with whichever area is causing most pain and, for a time, tolerate the additional burden that other areas gleefully provide. Of course it also pays to start with the easiest thing to fix that will actually make things better.

[Timo]

I don't think it is as much as "easier" starting with a reactive side, it is, like Diarmin said, what eliminates the greatest pain at the time. I could (and I did) find dozens of things that are wrong with availability and capacity side, but a) I can't get a buy in for fixing them because they are not easily understood by the management b) improved incinde mngt practices would make improvements in avail and cap more attainable

Anyhow... sounds like some fun times ahead. Off I go.

[BorisBear]

I don't think it is as much as "easier" starting with a reactive side, it is, like Diarmin said, what eliminates the greatest pain at the time. I could (and I did) find dozens of things that are wrong with availability and capacity side, but a) I can't get a buy in for fixing them because they are not easily understood by the management b) improved incinde mngt practices would make improvements in avail and cap more attainable

Anyhow... sounds like some fun times ahead. Off I go.

It sounds like the same thing albeit said in a slightly different way. Availability and Capacity are both largely proactive with the possible exception of Expanded Incident Lifecycle.......maybe not even that.


Incident Management is your low hanging fruit and you'll get plenty of support to fix it no doubt because it is painful and high profile.