Problem Management - Problem detection

It is likely that multiple ways of detecting problems will exist in all organizations. These will include:

• Suspicion or detection of a cause of one or more incidents by the Service Desk, resulting in a Problem Record being raised – the desk may have resolved the incident but has not determined a definitive cause and suspects that it is likely to recur, so will raise a Problem Record to allow the underlying cause to be resolved. Alternatively, it may be immediately obvious from the outset that an incident, or incidents, has been caused by a major problem, so a Problem Record will be raised without delay.
• Analysis of an incident by a technical support group which reveals that an underlying problem exists, or is likely to exist.
• Automated detection of an infrastructure or application fault, using event/alert tools automatically to raise an incident which may reveal the need for a Problem Record.
• A notification from a supplier or contractor that a problem exists that has to be resolved.
• Analysis of incidents as part of proactive Problem Management - resulting in the need to raise a Problem Record so that the underlying fault can be investigated further.

Frequent and regular analysis of incident and problem data must be performed to identify any trends as they become discernible. This will require meaningful and detailed categorization of incidents/problems and regular reporting of patterns and areas of high occurrence. 'Top ten' reporting, with drill-down capabilities to lower levels, is useful in identifying trends.

Further details of how detected trends should be handled are included in the Continual Service Improvement publication.

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Other ITIL Processes

Operational Layer:

• Configuration Management
• Service Desk Management
• Incident & Problem Management
• Change Management
• Release Management

Tactical Layer:

• Service Level Management
• Availability Management
• Capacity Management
• Continuity Management
• Financial Management