Problem Management vs Major Incident Management

MichaelCreatura · ‎12-20-2022

Hi All,

A question for you in terms of best practice with ServiceNow.

When we have a Major Incident we take advantage of ServiceNow's Major Incident functionality (Proposing and Promoting an Incident as such) and even make use of the Major Incident Workbench to manage Timeline, Findings, Overview etc. However our question is around further actions, if a root cause of a Major Incident is unknown or there are actions following an Incident (such as improve monitoring etc.) would you use the Major Incident form and create Incident tasks to investigate the root cause or would you Close the Incident and open a Problem record for the RCA (root cause analysis) work to be carried out?

Intrigued to hear how other SN users are using the system and what the consensus is for best practice.

Thanks!

AndersBGS · ‎12-20-2022

Hi Michael,

According to ITIL an incident is defined as "an unplanned interruption to an IT Service or reduction in the quality of an IT Service", where problem management refers to the underlying cause of the incident.

So, to answer your question according to ITIL best practices, if a root cause of an incident is unknown, hence a permanent resolution has not been located, the incident should be resolved with the workaround implemented and a problem ticket created.

If the incident is still ongoing (No workaround located), then off course all investigation should be within the incident until a workaround or a permanent resolution is located.

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View solution in original post

Mike_R · ‎12-20-2022

I agree with @AndersBGS, if the root cause is unknown, create the problem record for the root cause analysis.

Major Incident and Problem can also be used together, depending on the issue and what needs to be done.

Mike
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