An IT incident can take many forms. Essentially, an incident is an abnormal IT event that disrupts the day-to-day operations of an organization.
Whether an incident is minor or major, it needs to be resolved quickly so that the organization can resume operations as fast as possible.
This requires an understanding of good and bad practices in IT incident management.
Good practice: Manage the customer experience with effective communication
Your customers are likely to have certain expectations about how IT incidents will be managed within their organization, and with good reason: open and effective communication in a time of crisis is essential.
Think about how you will interact with your customers and how best to manage incidents according to their needs. Do you need to set up an elaborate hotline, or is a web-based user portal enough? That’s for you to determine!
Bad practice: Prioritizing strict ITIL process compliance over the customer
Needless to say, compliance with good IT management practices through the ITIL method processes is important for effective IT service management. However, compliance with ITIL practices should never hinder the objectives of the company you are serving. Make sure that your incident management serves the interests of your customers first and foremost.
Good practice: Basing IT incident management on customer maturity level
Before you start implementing new IT incident management processes, you should understand the IT maturity level of your customer or business. This will help you understand what the organization can accomplish and set realistic management goals.
This will lead to tangible and positive results that help you further improve your processes.
Bad practice: Attempting to manage problems instead of incidents
When a major incident occurs, there is often a desire to simultaneously manage the incident itself as well as the larger problem. However, managing the problem rather than the incident will only slow down the resolution of the incident and amplify the impact of the service disruption on the business.
Deal with incidents as quickly as possible, using workarounds if necessary. Then proceed with problem management, which will most often require more in-depth and time-consuming analysis.
The ITSM iTop solution helps you efficiently manage IT incidents
In short, a good IT incident management strategy must be based first and foremost on the customer’s IT needs. It is important that IT services contribute to the success of your organization before anything else.
The iTop ITSM solution is an incredibly flexible open source software that helps you manage various incidents efficiently. For more information about the numerous functionalities of this tool and the services offered by SEI Team, we invite you to contact us. It will be our pleasure to answer your questions!