What is Incident Management?

Incident management is an essential part of IT service management (ITSM) and has its roots in the IT service desk. It aims to restore a service to its normal operating state as quickly as possible after a disruption, while minimizing any negative impact on the business. Incident management encompasses the entire technical as well as the organizational process from incident response to escalation of issues and initiation of appropriate actions.

What is an incident?

An incident is a single, unexpected event that results (or may result) in significant business disruption. An example would be the spread of a Trojan on the network. But also hardware failure or the failure of an app can be declared as an incident/interruption.

Incident management process

To be prepared for incidents, companies create incident management processes that are documented. This specifies exactly which employees are responsible for handling and resolving the incident in which case.

Incident Management Workflow

1. Incident detection: Capture of the incident by the service desk or another capture source.
2. Incident categorization and prioritization: Categorization of the incident based on predefined criteria and assignment of a priority.
3. Incident investigation and diagnosis: Analysis of the incident to identify the underlying cause.
4. Incident resolution: Taking immediate action to limit the impact of the incident and prevent further damage and develop and implement a solution to restore normal operations.
5. Escalation and Collaboration: If necessary, escalate the incident to specialized support teams or other involved parties.
6. Communication: Communicate regularly with users and stakeholders to provide updates on incident management progress and communicate estimated resolution times.
7. Incident closure: Reviewing the resolved incident to ensure the service is back to normal. Closing the incident in the ticket system (such as JSM) and documenting the actions taken.
8. Incident analysis and improvement: Analyzing the incidents handled to identify trends, common issues, or opportunities to improve incident response and management. Derive actions to prevent future incidents. This process is performed typically in collaboration with the problem management practice.

Using Incident Management Tools

As IT operations become more complex, the automation of incident management becomes increasingly important. This is where a tool that can support all phases is beneficial. Jira Service Management and OpsGenie are recommended here.

After an incident, JSM can assist in planning future corrective actions, as well as incorporating data from other IM tools. OpsGenie was also developed by Atlassian, and it significantly enhances JSM capabilities for Incident Management by providing on-calls functionality, automated routing and escalation policies and more.

With every JSM subscription, you get OpsGenie for free. By integrating OpsGenie with JSM, incidents captured in JSM can be automatically routed to OpsGenie for efficient incident handling. The integration provides organizations with enhanced functionality and a holistic approach to incident management.

If you have any questions about efficient incident management, feel free to contact our consultants without obligation. We will support you on your way to successful service management.