ITIL Incident Management
In times of emergency, the department of Incident Management (IM) is the part of the ITIL Service Management (ITSM) process that makes everything go back to normal as quickly as possible. This helps to minimize the amount of lost productivity in addition to any adverse effects to the business. An incident can be described as any event that is not a part of the company’s standard policies or procedures that could potentially disrupt the flow of work production and service quality.
There is also a part of the ITSM process that is called Problem Management. The difference between these two processes is that the IM department deals with the symptoms of the problems. The Problem Management part of the process solves the underlying problems that have the incidents as symptoms. These two departments work together along with the other processes, which is why it is important to properly record all incidents and how they were resolved. Problem Management needs a proper record in order to cure the root of the problem so that there will be no more incidents related to the problem.
The main tasks of a the IM team are to record the details of the incidents, match the incidents with problems, settle and prioritize incidents, and delegating resolution tasks to other departments to ensure that the incident is well-taken care of. All of these tasks are imperative to reduce the amount of damage that an incident could cause to a company, and it is important that they are done in a timely manner. The team also tries to catch incidents in the making before consumers notice them. Incidents are usually reported by consumers who have problems with the service that they have received, so the IM department also sends out and interprets the surveys that are sent to consumers to catalog the incidents.