Incident Management Process- ISO 20000: An Overview

The incident management process is an essential component of ISO 20000. Since ISO 20000’s primary function is enhancing management processes, the incident management process – ISO 20000 designs the best tools and resources to accelerate the improvement and enhancement rates of service quality. In service management, the service desk handles challenges and receives customer requests. Incident management executes the requests across service management to restore the services to their original and more effective quality.

Key Objectives of Incident Management Process

The primary function of the incident management process is restoring the default service operation swiftly and efficiently in case of an incident. Incident management’s objectives include:

● Incident and data documentation
● Running incidents through the prescribed and standard procedures for thorough analysis.
● Identifying and categorising different incidents, their nature, and impact level.
● Prioritising the incidents according to their impact.
● Increasing the visibility of the incidents to avoid negligence.
● Conducting multiple and systematic tests on the incidents carried out by employees, internal staff, and external staff.
● Diagnosing the incidents and devising business-centred, cost-efficient resolution strategies to improve customer service and reports.
● Ensuring service operations run properly with minimal interference, incidents, and challenges.
● Recover the services to their original and agreed-upon level with swiftness.

The incident management process consists of various roles that ensure the desired objectives are met, including:

#1 Static Roles

The static role involves identifying the process initiator, who owns and develops resource strategies, and the process manager, who ensures the operations run smoothly and efficiently.

#2 Dynamic Roles

This process focuses on the identified incidents and develops an incident-centred approach by implementing an incident agent and owner.

#3 Service-Centred Roles

Service roles check incident management’s support system, including primary level support and special support. The primary-level support is a person who handles customer tickets and requests and functions as a service desk. The special support level includes an internal IT department staff member, who offers professional assistance, and a staff member who works for both internal and external IT departments and provides specialised help.

#4 Customer-Centred Roles

Customer-centred roles include a customer on the receiving end of the incident, a person who documents the incident, and service desk assistance to handle customer reports and requests.

What are the Processes of Incident Management (ISO 20000)?

The incident management process incorporates a series of processes that ensure that incident management runs smoothly on every level and during every step. The sub-processes do not have a standard operative period, as their functionality and time depend on the scale of the incident, which decides its activities and workflow procedure. There are eight incident management processes:

● Incident reporting
● Incident identification
● Incident impact
● Incident handler
● Strategy management
● Service-level management
● Incident elimination
● Recovery and restoration

#1 Incident Reporting

A user experiencing an incident can report it to the service desk via phone calls, messages, service portals, or live assistance dialogue boxes.

#2 Incident Identification

After reporting, incidents are separated into different categories according to the nature of the problem, affected area or department, impacted network, or damaged software or hardware.

#3 Incident Impact

The following process after incident categorisation is analysing the function of the incident to determine its urgency and magnitude. A strategic method measures the scale of damage to decide if it can affect other areas and users. The urgency of an incident determines its resolution scale that divides the incidents into four categories:

● Severe
● High
● Medium
● Low

#4 Incident Handler

The incident handler process involves assigning the incident to a specialist or expert who knows its scope, impact, and the affected business area.

#5 Strategy Management

The urgency of the incident determines where its solution and resolution strategy are consulted and decided by the handler.

#6 Service-Level Management

The handler must ensure that service-level management approves the strategy and methods devised to deal with the incident. Service-level management is allotted to incidents according to their categorisation, urgency, scale, and user.

#7 Incident Elimination

A temporary or permanent solution that manages to curb and combat the incident is considered a successful incident elimination procedure. Once the incident is dealt with, the handler and service desk can close it and move on to the next incident.

#8 Recovery and Restoration

The final process involves ensuring the services are up and running smoothly and have been restored to their normal status.

Benefits of Incident Management Process Template

Incident management process – ISO 20000 is a process that supports services and ensures any vulnerabilities found in them are handled swiftly. There are various ways in which the incident management process benefits organisations, such as:

#1 Quick Resolution

A well-maintained and proper incident management process resolves and eliminates incidents faster and regularly and prevents incidents from damaging data and reports.

#2 Constant and Independent Monitoring

Instead of relying on an expert to eliminate challenges, an incident management process enables the specialised team, other teams, and employees to solve incidents in their respective departments and areas. Additionally, the incident management process ensures the management procedures are up-to-date, reliable, and efficient.

#3 Room for Improvement

The incident management process allows companies to understand and document various software functions, such as the time to close an incident and use that report to improve their incident resolution time and strategies.

#4 Incident Resolution Proof

An incident management system automatically generates reports of the identified, categorised, and resolved incidents, which come in handy if organisations need to show the results to their investors and shareholders. An organised report adds to the enterprise’s reliability and ability to solve incidents and ensures user satisfaction.

#5 Customer Transparency

Users reporting their incidents can stay updated with the entire incident management process, from the first process until their incident gets resolved. The incident management software creates trust and transparency between customers and the IT department. Since the status and handler of the incident are visible, it prevents the chances of two experts handling the same incident, increasing productivity.

Final Thoughts

Incident management process – ISO 20000 is essential for all enterprises. Start-ups or established organisations, every company needs software that solves its customer’s problems swiftly and effectively to ensure customer satisfaction. The incident management process allows an organisation to identify incidents using the reported data, such as images, and devise strategies to deal with them and resolve a user’s ticket.