Problem management can be one of the most beneficial IT service management disciplines, but it can also be one of the most difficult to justify and maintain. It investigates recurring incidents, the root cause of incidents, and provides a focus on incident prevention.
In my blog, I will provide some reasons as to why you need to explore the benefits offered by Problem Management:
Reduce Incident Volumes (and the time and effort required by these incidents)
Sometimes our service desk agents work on recurring incidents and fix the issue of similar incidents again and again. This is because the issue is being solved in the symptom (Incident) level and not on the root (Problem) level. If we analyze the root cause of a problem and fix it, there can be reduction in the number of incidents that need to be handled by the service desk agents.
Reduce workload and stress on your service desk agents
Organization’s often encounter that service desk agents burn out due to heavy workload. There are too many incidents they are expected to handle and each incident seems to be as important as the next one. The incidents can be due to service failure, SLA breaches, aged tickets that are in the system for some time. They start their day prioritizing incidents but soon, due to back logs, they are trapped in a situation where they need to look at everything “now”. It not only affects their health but in the long run, can also create problems for the business operation. On top of this, if the agents have to work on redundant incidents day-in and day-out, it adds to their frustration.
If our problem management team fixes the issue of incidents that can be resolved at a root level, there will be some relief to the service desk team. With your service desk staff now facing a smaller, more-varied workload, they can enjoy a less pressurized and a more enjoyable working experience.
Reduce average time to provide solution
In problem management, there is something called a Known Error. A known error is used for incident deflection and it can include a documented root cause and a workaround. A known error is a record (documented) that is saved in Known Error Database (KEDB).
If you have a KEDB in place, then your IT service desk agents are able to resolve incidents quicker. Why?
When a new incident is reported, the service desk agents can consult the KEDB to see if there is already a workaround available. This saves them from having to individually troubleshoot every incident that comes in. And if the incident is part of an already recorded known error, then the agent can immediately apply the workaround. They can also advise the end user that this is a known issue and people are working to resolve it. This will also give the customers some peace of mind, knowing that the problem will be resolved.
Hence, the time to resolve a customer issue decreases drastically.
Prevent incidents before they occur!!!
Think of a scenario where your organization can prevent incidents before they’ve even happened. Sounds magical!
Problem management can be proactive and reactive. Proactive problem management will be the one where your organization identifies and fixes the issues before any incidents are submitted. Reactive problem management is the one where, after an incident is submitted, the problem management team analyzes the root cause of a problem and decides whether the problem can be fixed or not.
Proactive problem management can require more effort and expertise to identify when a service interruption might take place and make the necessary arrangements to ensure that it doesn’t happen. Proactive problem management needs to work with other processes such as incident management, asset management, event management and change management. You also need monitoring tools and there should be a dedicated problem team in place.
As I said, proactive problem management can prevent incidents from occurring. Practically we cannot prevent all the incidents though. However, preventing a good chunk of incidents would mean less incidents to the service desk agents and less interruptions to the end user.
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ServiceNow® Problem Management has introduced state management starting the Madrid release. The state denotes the phases each Problem passes through during its life cycle. Each state is important for the success of the process and the quality of service delivered.
The different states are represented as follows:
In the process flow, the rectangular boxes denote the problem states and the arrows denote the actions taken and the flow of the process.
Note: The different states (above) will be used for new customers from Madrid (or those that zboot their instance). ServiceNow® will be working on a migration utility in a future release so that existing customers can adopt the new states. There will be more details to follow on this during 2019.
To understand how Problem moves from one state to another, let us take an example where a Problem is created from an Incident (ticket). The Problem gets assigned to the problem coordinator who is responsible for managing the Problem throughout its life cycle.
- When a problem is created, it is in the New state.
- The problem coordinator triages, categorizes, and prioritizes the Problem.
- The problem coordinator may need to ask for additional information to decide which of the following actions to take:
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- Confirm the Problem
- Close the Problem as a Duplicate
- Cancel the Problem
- For Root cause analysis, the problem coordinator creates problem tasks and assigns those tasks to different groups/teams. In this phase, the problem coordinator can take the following actions:
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- Communicate temporary workaround to other tasks that are waiting for the resolution of this problem.
- Create or link to a defect or enhancement request; or a change request if there is a fix to be applied.
- Document a known error article to help with incident deflection.
- Accepts the risk that the problem can’t be fixed for now as there is no solution available or the cost to fix is too high.
Users who wants to create an Incident in the Service Portal can view the related known error articles. The users may find the resolution in the known error article itself and may not need to create an Incident. If they still need help, they can create the Incident as a normal incident.
For the benefit of users, ServiceNow® Problem Management is also integrated with contextual search and advanced knowledge management to provide ease of search which, in turn, leads to quicker resolution.
To know more about integration and how ServiceNow handles Problem Management, read https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/madrid-it-service-management/page/product/problem-management/conc...
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