The Problem
Effective Problem Management—which identifies and addresses the root cause of an incident or a series of incidents by identifying, tracking, and resolving the underlying problems—is the IT service strategy that can provide stability and optimize your NOC support.
Using both reactive and proactive approaches to Problem Management can help your organization demonstrate value, seek new efficiencies, and overcome infrastructure issues. Additional benefits of an effective Problem Management strategy include:
- Fewer incidents
- Streamlined NOC support processes
- Optimized technologies
- More productive and knowledgeable staff
- Higher service quality
- Increased service availability or uptime
- Reduced costs
- Higher customer satisfaction
Although Problem Management is less visible than incident management, it is just as critical to your NOC. Whereas users feel the direct impact of incidents, they are unlikely to be aware of Problem Management work, because the ultimate objective is to stop incidents before they happen.
This lack of visibility can cause organizations to spend the bulk of their NOC resources resolving incidents, rather than investing in Problem Management to prevent incidents from occurring.
How We Solve It
For those receiving our Tier 3 Incident Management services, Standard Problem Management includes performing activities needed to diagnose the root cause of incidents and submitting change requests to resolve those problems. Predictive Problem Management aims to avoid incidents proactively. This service also maintains information about problems and workarounds for use by Incident Management.
Here are a few Problem Management best practices we bring to make our customers more efficient and effective:
- Leveraging workarounds when needed: Workarounds may be necessary when finding a resolution is difficult or time consuming. In certain cases, a workaround can become permanent if the resolution would not be viable or cost-effective. In this case, the problem should remain in the Known Error database so the documented workaround can be used when related incidents occur. Workarounds can sometimes be made more efficient by finding opportunities to automate them.
- Ensuring support can efficiently support Problem Management: Most NOC activities, including Problem and Incident Management, are 24×7 activities that require dedicated resources. We take on the work of routine activities and enable higher-level technical teams to focus on more advanced issues, like diagnosing and resolving problems.
- Prioritizing proactive Problem Management: Practicing proactive Problem Management on a regular basis can help reveal new opportunities for improvement. Of course, it can be difficult to get out of a reactive mode, but deliberate investment into proactive Problem Management has the potential to shift your organization’s focus from putting out fires to optimizing your technologies, processes, and talents. We make that investment, so you don’t have to.
