Event, Incident, and Request Management
Manage service events, incidents, and requests from creation/detection to completion/closure.
Improvement Planning
Practices-Outcomes-Metrics (POM)
Representative POMs are described for Event, Incident, and Request Management at each level of maturity.
- 2Basic
- Practice
- Establish basic monitoring of key events.
- Outcome
- Key events can be tracked.
- Metric
- % of services that are monitored for events.
- Practice
- Ensure that incidents are tracked, recorded, and reported in a satisfactory manner.
- Outcome
- Current and historical incident data is available.
- Metrics
- # of incidents recorded.
- % of support time that is covered by trouble-tickets.
- Practice
- Ensure that requests are dealt with, even if there is no advanced prioritization in place.
- Outcome
- Requests are typically handled in chronological order.
- Metrics
- Mean time to close request.
- Mean time to respond to request.
- 3Intermediate
- Practices
- Put in place automated event monitoring.
- Ensure that events are prioritized and filtered according to importance.
- Outcome
- Data on relevant events can be passed to key processes.
- Metrics
- % of services that are monitored for events.
- % of key processes that automatically receive data on relevant events.
- Practices
- Put in place an effective, tool-supported, end-to-end, trouble ticketing system.
- Track, record, and report incidents effectively, and prioritize and manage incidents based on the urgency to restore services as defined by SLAs.
- Outcome
- SLA violations decrease.
- Metrics
- # of incidents recorded.
- % of support time that is covered by trouble-tickets.
- % of incidents causing a breach of an SLA.
- Practice
- Prioritize requests effectively according to predefined request classes or metrics (e.g. time for fulfilment, etc.).
- Outcomes
- Requests are handled more efficiently.
- Ticket progress can be tracked and traceability of requests is possible.
- Metrics
- Mean time to close request.
- Mean time to respond to request.
- % of requests recorded from end-to-end.
- 4Advanced
- Practice
- Use event-monitoring data to help address all incidents, both proactively and reactively.
- Outcome
- Service availability and reliability is increased.
- Metrics
- % of services that are monitored for events.
- % of key processes that automatically receive data on relevant events.
- Practices
- Incorporate system-generated trouble messages into the trouble ticket system.
- Address recurring incidents through problem management based on Root Cause Analysis (RCA).
- Outcomes
- There is improved identification of trouble messages.
- The root causes of recurring incidents are identified and can be addressed.
- Metrics
- % of trouble messages that are generated automatically by systems.
- % of recurring incidents solved with RCA.
- Practice
- Put in place tool-supported request management to prioritize requests according to the business relevance of affected services, as defined by Service Level Agreements (SLAs).
- Outcomes
- SLA violations are minimized.
- The efficiency and quality of IT services are improved.
- Metrics
- Mean time to close request.
- Mean time to respond to request.
- % of requests recorded from end-to-end.
- % of requests completed within agreed SLAs.
- 5Optimized
- Practice
- Complement existing proactive and reactive event management with effective self-healing processes.
- Outcome
- Event management is optimized with effective self-healing processes.
- Metrics
- % of services that are monitored for events.
- % of key processes that automatically receive data on relevant events.
- Evidence of self-healing processes.
- Practices
- Set up effective, defined processes for updating the knowledge database, the known error database, and Root Cause Analysis (RCA) results.
- Put automated incident prediction systems in place.
- Outcomes
- The majority of potential incidents are averted.
- Those incidents that do occur are handled automatically.
- The time taken to resolve incidents is minimized.
- Metrics
- Mean time to resolve incident.
- % of requests resolved using the knowledge database.
- Practices
- Put in place an automated, role-based, request submission capability (e.g. via an online catalogue).
- Dynamically prioritize requests based on SLAs, business relevance, and the business cycle.
- Outcomes
- There is efficient and high quality administration of service requests.
- Management of service requests is recognized as a key strength by stakeholders across the business ecosystem.
- Metric
- Existence of automated, role-based request submission capabilities.