Interfaces
As we discussed in the section about incident management, the major relationship that problem and incident management have is with each other. Problem management does interface with other processes, however. The following sections show these interfaces, grouped by the lifecycle stage.
Service Strategy
Problem management interfaces with the service strategy financial management process. The cost of overcoming problems has to be considered before actions can be taken.
Financial management for IT services Problem management uses this process to assess the financial impact of possible solutions or workarounds. This information can be used to decide whether a permanent resolution is financially justified. Having the information from financial management to be able to assess the cost of downtime and having the cost of providing support for services with unresolved problems will also help you prioritize problems. Problem management can use information from financial management to prove the cost-effectiveness of resolving underlying causes, rather than spending time resolving multiple occurrences of the incident.
Service Design
The service design processes are intended to deliver services without problems. Not all problems can be foreseen, however, and the service design processes of availability management, capacity management, and IT service continuity management all take proactive steps to identify possible issues and deal with these problems before they result in incidents. This is very similar to problem management. How the service-level management process interfaces with problems is different; SLM is dependent on problem management to identify the root cause of incidents and resolve them in order to prevent downtime that could cause a service level target to be breached.
Availability management Availability management has very similar aims to problem management: to prevent downtime. The proactive activities undertaken by availability management are directly related to proactive problem management; availability attempts to proactively identify risks that could result in a loss of service and to take preventative action. Problem management can supply information to availability management about the success of any measures taken.
Capacity management Some performance problems can be caused by capacity issues. Capacity management will be involved in resolving these issues and also taking proactive measures to prevent capacity issues. Again, problem management can supply information about the success of any measures taken.
IT service continuity management When a significant problem is causing or will cause major disruption to the business, it may be necessary to invoke the ITSCM plan until the issue is resolved. ITSCM also attempts to proactively identify risks that could result in a major loss of service and to take preventative action.
Service level management SLM agrees with the business about the level of service to be provided. Incidents and problems will impact the service and may cause the service targets to be breached. The service-level manager has to report to the business about any failures and what is being done to avoid them in future. Problem management actions can be reported at the service review and may form part of the service improvement plan. SLM can assist in the prioritization of problems by providing information about the business impact and the effect on services of proposed resolutions. It should be noted, however, that SLAs should not contain target problem resolution times; by definition, a problem is the unknown cause of incidents, so it is not possible to know how long a problem may take to fix. It may be necessary to wait for a recurrence in order to gather sufficient evidence to diagnose the problem.
Service Transition
Problem management interfaces with several of the service transition processes. As discussed in relation to incident management, changes may be the cause or solution to problems also. SACM provides invaluable information to enable common factors to be identified across multiple incidents. Release and deployment is involved in contributing to problem management’s known error database, which is also related to knowledge management.
Change Management When a change is required to resolve a problem or implement a workaround, it is submitted to change management in the form of an RFC. Problem management will depend on information from change management to know whether such a change was implemented successfully. Problem management also has an interface to change management when changes introduce problems or cause incidents.
Service Asset and Configuration Management The CMS provides essential information to problem management: identifying faulty CIs. The CMS is particularly useful when it is used to identify which CI is common to several incidents and which may be the source of the fault (for example, when several users, using different applications, complain about a performance issue, the CMS may show that all the users are using the same network equipment). The CMS is also helpful in identifying the impact of a problem, because it shows the dependencies for each CI.
Release and Deployment Management When a change to resolve a fault is approved by change management, it is the change and deployment management process that will implement it in the live environment. As part of deploying a new release, it is responsible for ensuring any known errors from development are entered into the KEDB. Problem management also has an interface to change management when releases introduce problems or cause incidents.
Knowledge Management The KEDB is an essential input into knowledge transfer; the SKMS may hold both problem records and the KEDB.
Continual Service Improvement
Problem management and continual service improvement have similar objectives; problem management activities can also be seen as CSO activities.
The Seven-Step Improvement Process The aims of CSI and problem management are very closely allied. Both seek to drive out errors and improve service quality. As stated earlier, actions identified to resolve or prevent problems may be entered into the CSI register. The seven-step improvement process can be used by CSI or problem management to identify and resolve underlying problems.
