Benefits of Using Problem Management
ITIL 4 defines the key purpose of Problem Management as being “to reduce the likelihood and impact of incidents by identifying actual and potential causes of incidents and managing workarounds and known errors. ITIL further expand and explains that “Problems cause incidents. They need to be analyzed and investigated so that workarounds and resolutions can be identified which will in turn reduce the number and impact of future incidents.”
Without Problem Management, you have:
- Repeat incidents, both major and minor
- Time is wasted by IT staff repairing the same kind of issue, over and over.
- Reputational loss because “I’ve had the same issue for weeks and it keeps happening and no one fixes it for good”
Problem Management activities are very closely related to incident management and the practices need to be designed together within the value chain.
How Problems Are Initiated
Directly in ServiceNow - A Service Desk Agent, Incident Manager, Problem Coordinator, or other IT user can create a problem directly when they believe they see an underlying issue that is worth investigating.
Directly from an Incident – Incident Managers, Service Desk Analysts, Problem Managers, or other IT Support staff can raise a problem from an incident where they are seeing evidence of a problem based on the incident record/s.
Automatically via Integrations - Problems can be automatically generated via external systems such as a vendor system integration.
Problem Management Lifecycle
States in any ServiceNow application serve a specific purpose. They are designed to make it clear where in the problem ticket currently resides and to display progress towards resolution. Our recommended Problem Management process has the following state model:
This table helps explain some of the actions expected in each state as well as who is responsible for owning and ensuring that the problem gets resolved in a timely manner.
| New | Assess | Root Cause Analysis | Fix in Progress | Resolved | Closed | |
| Responsible / Role needed |
Problem created by anyone with ITIL role Role needed: ITIL |
Person in the Assigned To field becomes the Problem Coordinator Role needed: problem_coordinator |
Person who is in Assigned To field Role needed: problem_coordinator
Tasks created and assigned to a problem coordinator or a problem analyst Role needed: problem_analyst |
Person who is in Assigned To field Role needed: problem_coordinator |
Person who is in Assigned To field Role needed: problem_coordinator |
|
| Actions |
Raise new problem Document problem statement |
Determine if genuine problem (not duplicate) Review to ensure investigation is required Set Urgency and Impact to establish priority (matrix chart below) Set categorization Set service(s) and CI |
Create tasks for investigation and root cause analysis (RCA) Identify workaround if possible Identify RCA if possible Publish known error article |
Create tasks for fix implementation Apply fix |
Document fix notes Communicate fix Confirm problem is resolved |
No further activities |
Process Overview
Establishing Priority
Problem prioritization typically drives the criticality associated with the handling of the problem and the order in which problems will be focused on. Priority is calculated through a combination of Impact and Urgency.
Impact is the effect that a problem has on business.
Urgency is the extent to which the problem’s resolution can tolerate delay.
Priority is generated from urgency and impact according to the following table.
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|
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Urgency |
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|
|
1 - High |
2 - Medium |
3 - Low |
|
Impact |
1 - High |
Priority 1 - Critical |
Priority 2 - High |
Priority 3 - Medium |
|
2 - Medium |
Priority 2 - High |
Priority 3 - Medium |
Priority 4 - Low |
|
|
3 - Low |
Priority 3 - Medium |
Priority 4 - Low |
Priority 4 - Low |
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The information above is a quick reference guide, which is a small subset of information from the Problem Management - Process Guide (Vancouver Release), created by ServiceNow. Should you need more information please reach out to Lisa Hisson via the ServiceNow team email at servicenow-support@berkeley.edu