Responsibilities for Incident Communication Plan

Release version: Washingtondc

Updated February 1, 2024

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Summary of Responsibilities for Incident Communication Plan

The Incident Communication Plan in IT Service Management outlines the responsibilities of contacts involved in managing incident communications. It helps identify key contacts and their roles throughout the communication lifecycle, ensuring effective incident response and resolution.

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Key Features

Default Responsibilities: Key contacts automatically notified during the creation of an incident communication plan include:
- Duty Manager: Senior presence during incidents, assesses situations against procedures, and coordinates corrective actions.
- Incident Manager: Senior technician responsible for coordinating resources, assessing incident impact, and deciding on escalations.
- Duty Director: Escalation point for critical issues, partners with business directors to approve recovery plans.
Other Responsibilities: Additional roles can be selected for notification, including:
- Business Director: Key business contact for incident plans.
- Communication Manager: Manages communications during incidents.
- Crisis Action Manager: Oversees incident communication plans.
- Crisis Action Team Member: Involves department heads in incident management.
- Development Personnel: Engaged in troubleshooting incidents.
- Operations Support Personnel: Provides second or third level support.
- Service Owner: Manages communications related to their services.
- Technical Support: Involved in resolving incidents at a technical level.

Key Outcomes

By defining contact responsibilities, ServiceNow customers can ensure that the right individuals are notified and involved in the incident response process. This structure enhances communication efficiency, minimizes response times, and ensures that all relevant parties are engaged in managing incidents effectively.

Contact responsibilities helps you to identify contacts by their responsibilities and to understand what you can expect from the user throughout the life cycle of the communication plan.

There are two types of responsibilities available for use with incident communication plans:

Default Responsibilities: Contacts who are notified by default.
Other Responsibilities: Contacts who can be selected for notification.

Use contact definitions to view and modify the rules that determine the specific users associated with contact responsibilities.

Default Responsibilities

By default, contacts with the following responsibilities are notified when an incident communication plan is created:

Duty Manager
Incident Manager
Duty Director

These roles are involved with resolving the source incident or original event that the incident communication plan relates to. They are seen as key contacts for the incident communication plan.

The following sections describe typical operational roles for these responsibilities.

Table 1. Contact Administration Default Responsibilities
Responsibility	Description
Duty Manager	The senior point of presence in the monitoring environment at the time an incident occurs. The Duty Manager assesses the incident against standard operating procedures, escalation triggers, and personal knowledge and experience, to take corrective actions. To clarify the urgency and impact of an incident, the Duty Manager can contact the Incident Manager for advice.
Incident Manager	A senior technician, accountable for coordinating and managing all technical resources required to resolve incidents. After being notified by the Duty Manager of a serious incident, the Incident Manager assesses the seriousness and associated business impact. Based on this assessment, the Incident Manager decides whether to escalate the incident to the Duty Director. The Incident Manager may escalate to the Duty Director to gain access to resources outside of the department, if necessary.
Duty Director	The escalation point for all issues that affect critical services. The Duty Director works in partnership with the business directors in the organization to approve recovery plans developed by the Incident Manager. The Duty Director also manages the senior level communications for the source incident.

Other Responsibilities

Incident Communications Management provides the following additional responsibilities that can be added to incident communication plans. You can also create contact responsibilities, as needed. The associated users receive notifications about the incident communication plan.

Table 2. Contact Administration Other Responsibilities
Responsibility	Description
Business Director	Director within the business who is identified as a potential contact when an incident communication plan occurs.
Communication Manager	Business-facing role in the event communication is required in an incident communication plan.
Crisis Action Manager	Overall responsibility and accountability for managing incident communication plans.
Crisis Action Team Member	Nominated department heads who are involved when an incident communication plan occurs.
Development personnel	Development personnel involved in the troubleshooting and resolving an incident communication plan.
Operations support personnel	Personnel involved in the second or third level of support in troubleshooting and resolving an incident communication plan.
Service Owner	Service owner or manager who is identified as a potential contact when an incident communication plan relates to one or more of their services.
Technical Support	Second or third level technical support personnel involved in troubleshooting and resolving an incident communication plan.