iWise Problem Management

It is extremely difficult to describe a painting in words rather than pictures. iWise software is a "see" rather than a "what." But we will do our best to describe it in both words and images. Below is a summary of iWise Problem Management.

When an incident cannot be quickly resolved or when the same type of incident occurs repeatedly, there is often a deeper, underlying cause. When this occurs, you can create a problem, often directly from an incident. Thresholds, or rules, for when you should create a problem from an incident are established by your enterprise, but a problem usually indicates that there is an unknown error that is causing incidents and needs to be investigated. In some cases, when the cause is determined and a temporary work-around or a permanent fix is applied, the problem becomes a "known error."

Problem Management provides an efficient method for personnel to enter and manage problems. Managing a problem includes classification, investigation, diagnosis, work-arounds, timely fixes, service level analysis, and other important processes. The aim of Problem Management is to reduce the effect of incidents and problems on your infrastructure, and, if possible, to prevent those same issues from recurring, by detecting, resolving, and thus preventing incidents.

Problem Management is related to Incident Management on several levels. According to ITIL, a "problem" is defined as an unknown underlying cause of one or more incidents. A single problem can cause multiple incidents, and the underlying issue may not be pinpointed until several incidents have occurred, and someone detects a common thread. You may resolve the first few related incidents fairly easily (for example, by rebooting a computer), while unknowingly treating the symptom instead of the problem, until it becomes clear that there is a trend. This is the time to create a problem, which generally indicates that there is an unknown error somewhere in the system. The problem is independent of its related incidents, because they can be resolved and closed without solving the problem. Theoretically, when the problem is resolved, no more incidents of that nature will occur because the underlying issue was eliminated.

Although the purpose of both Incident Management and Problem Management is to resolve issues, they are fundamentally different in their approach. The former records the incident and seeks to resolve it, while the latter is meant to detect, resolve, and prevent incidents from occurring. Simply put, Incident Management is a reactive discipline, while Problem Management is ideally a proactive discipline.

Most support policies revolve around addressing incidents as soon as possible, with solutions or work-arounds, with the goal of customer satisfaction in mind. Fixes for problems, however, are more involved and are generally arrived at through a more methodical approach. Problems should, of course, be resolved as quickly as possible; however, since the emphasis is on finding a permanent solution to the issue, they often require more investigation and analysis than the resolution of an incident.

Problem Management is used to:

• Identify, record, and classify problems.
• Investigate and diagnose problems.
• Identify and assess errors and underlying issues.
• Identify work-arounds until a permanent solution is in place.
• Resolve and close problems, while providing tools to monitor the process of resolution.
• Minimize incidents and prevent further problems through trend analysis and support action.
• Provide management information and problem reviews.
• Interface with Incident Management, Change Management, and CMDB for verification, automation, and to ensure information entered is accurate.
• Obtain problem reports in a variety of formats (if you have Crystal Reports or other ODBC reporting tools installed).
• Determine if a problem is a duplicate of one previously entered, or if it is related to a recent change.
• Check CMDB to determine the effects of a problem on the rest of the configuration.
• Determine if the problem being entered is caused by a problem with a higher-level component.

In iWise, an incident record that has an associated problem contains a reference to it.

Problems reside in an Enterprise Information Base (EIB). You need not be aware of the format or processing of this EIB, but you must be aware of how to enter an problem, and the type of data that should be entered if Problem Management is to be effective. There are several panels involved in direct entry of a problem; however, many functions can simplify or accelerate this process, including copying an existing problem or a model problem.