INCIDENT MANAGEMENT

BENEFITS
• Reduce Impact on Business
• Improve user productivity
• Make SLA Info. readily available
• Lower cost of doing business
• Improved user/customer satisfaction
VALUES TO BUSINESS
- Higher availability of service resulting from lower downtime to the business
- Identifies business priorities and dynamically allocates resources if needed
- Identifies potential improvements to services
- Identifies additional service or training requirements in the business/IT
PROBLEM MANAGEMENT
BENEFITS
• Preventing service disruptions
• Maintaining service levels
• Meeting service availability requirements
• Increasing staff efficiency and productivity
• Improving user satisfaction
VALUES TO BUSINESS
 Higher availability of IT services
 Higher productivity of business and IT staff
 Reduced expenditure on workarounds or fixes that do not work
 Reduction in cost of effort in fire-fighting or resolving repeat incidents.

METRICS FOR PROBLEM MANAGEMENT

• The total number of problems recorded in the period (as a control measure)
• The percentage of problems resolves within SLA targets (and the percentage that are not!)
• The number and percentage of problems that exceeded their target resolution times.
• The backlog of outstanding problems and the trend (static, reducing or increasing?)
• The average cost of handling a problem.
• The number of major problems (opened and closed and backlog)
• The percentage of Major Problem Reviews successfully performed
• The number of Known Errors added to the KEDB
• The percentage accuracy of the KEDB (from audits of the database)
• The percentage of Major Problem Reviews completed successfully and on time.
CHANGE MANAGEMENT
To make an appropriate response to all requests for change entails a considered approach to
 assessment of risk and business continuity,
 change impact,
 resource requirements,
 change authorization and
 especially to the realizable business benefit

What makes a standard change Standard?

• There is a defined trigger to initiate the RFC
• The tasks are well known
• Authority is given in advance
 • Budgetary approval is delegated
• Risk is low and well understood

Process activities, methods and techniques

• Overall Change Management activities include:
– Planning and controlling changes
– Understanding the impact of change
– Ensuring remediation plans are available
– Approving change (mechanism)
– Scheduling changes and releases
– Communicating change
– Measuring (efficiency/effectiveness) change
– Reporting on change
– Continual improvement.

Practice what you preach

• Getting to understand the concept of using standard changes
• List all those changes where “fit, form, or function” are affected, but don’t necessarily require
change management’s full attention:
– Updating the virus definitions
– Creating standard user accounts
– Proving someone access to a standard directory or group.

THE 7 R’S OF CHANGE

1. Who RAISED the change?
2. What is the REASON for the change?
3. What is the RETURN required from the change?
4. What are the RISKS involved in the change?
5. What RESOURCES are required to deliver the change?
6. Who is RESPONSIBLE for the build, test, and implementation of the change?
7. What is the RELATIONSHIP between this change and other change?
The Top five risk indicators of poor Change Management are:
1. Unauthorized changes being carried out. Any unauthorized change above zero is unacceptable.
2. Unplanned outages that have not been identified in the Projected Services Outage (PSO)
document.
3. A low change success rate on review of changes made.
4. A high number of emergency changes being introduced and this usually identifies poor planning
of changes.
5. Delayed project implementation.
PROCESS BENEFITS
 Better alignment of IT to business needs
 Increased risk assessment
 Reduced adverse impact of IT changes
 Better assessment of cost of changes
 Improved Problem and Availability Management
 Increased productivity of users
 Increased visibility/communication of changes
RELEASE MANAGEMENT is responsible for implementation and quality control of all the hardware and
software installed on the live environment.
- work closely with Change Management and Configuration Management
- Change Management is responsible for approving and supervising the process as a whole.
However, Release Management has the specific task of designing, testing and installing pre-
defined changes in the live environment.
BENEFITS
 Changes are made without deterioration of the quality of service.
 New releases meet the proposed objectives.
 The number of incidents caused by incompatibilities with other installed hardware or software
is reduced.
 Elicits the opinions of users on the functionality and usability of the new versions.
 Keeping the DSL properly maintained will prevent the loss of (valuable) copies of the source
files.
 The number of illegal software copies is reduced.
 Control of the software and hardware deployed is centralized.
 Protection against viruses and other problems associated with uncontrolled software versions is
improved.

This DEVELOPMENT work is sometimes done in-house, but in many cases requires the involvement of
external service providers
Release Management
- Responsible for designing and building new versions following the guidelines in the relevant
RFCs.
- Ensure that the hardware or software package or packages offered meet the specifications
described in the RFC.
This Development includes
- Automatic data back-ups.
- Any updates that need to be made to the associated databases.
- Installation of new versions on different systems or different sites.
- Creating the logs of the installation process.
An integral part of the development work is drawing up the associated back-out plans.
The main activities performed during the testing process should include:
 Tests of correct functioning of the release in a realistic environment.
 Tests of automatic or manual installation procedures.
 List of bugs or errors detected, if any.
 Tests on back-out plans.
 Documentation for users and service personnel.

Release Management will be responsible for the final validation of the version before proceeding with
its installation. If the version is not accepted it will be returned to Release Management for re-
evaluation.
CAPACITY MANAGEMENT - is concerned with ensuring that cost-effective capacity exists at all times
which meets or exceeds the agreed needs of the business as established in Service Level Agreements.
- should be the focal point for all IT performance and capacity issues
- provided at the RIGHT TIME, in the RIGHT VOLUME, at the RIGHT PRICE, and ensuring that IT
is used in the most efficient manner
3 MAJOR ACTIVITIES
 Business Capacity Management sub-process is to ensure that future business requirements for
IT services are considered and understood, and that sufficient capacity to support the services is
planned and implemented in an appropriate timescale.
 Service Capacity Management sub-process is to identify and understand the IT services, their
use of resource, working patterns, peaks and troughs, as well as to ensure that the services can
and do meet their SLA targets.
The key to successful Service Capacity Management is to pre-empt difficulties, wherever possible.
 The primary task of CCM (components capacity management) is to translate Service Capacity
Management factors into capacity requirements for individual components or Configuration
Items.
The key to successful Component Capacity Management is to pre-empt difficulties wherever possible
WORKLOAD MANAGEMENT can be defined as understanding which customers use what service, when
they use the service, how they use the service and finally how using the service impacts the
performance of a single or multiple systems and/or components that make up a service.
DEMAND MANAGEMENT is often associated with influencing the end users’ behaviour. By influencing
the end users’ behaviour an organization can change the workload thus improving the performance of
components that support IT services
Iterative Activities of Capacity Management
• Trend Analysis can be done on the resource utilization and service performance information
that was collected by the Service and Component Capacity Management sub-processs.
• Modelling range from making estimates based on experience and current resource utilization
information, to pilot studies, prototypes and full-scale benchmarks
• Analytical Modelling are representations of computer system’s behaviour using mathematical
techniques such as multi-class network queuing theory.
• Simulation Modelling involves the modelling of discrete events, such as transaction arrival
rates, against a given hardware configuration.
• Baseline Models The first stage in modelling is to create a baseline model that accurately
reflects the performance that is being achieved

CONTINUOUS VS CONTINUAL
• CONTINUOUS - is the stronger word and denotes that continuity is union of parts which is
absolute and uninterrupted; as a continuous sheet of ice; a continuous flow of water

• CONTINUAL in most cases, marks a close and unbroken succession of things rather than
absolute continuity. Thus we speak of continual showers, implying a repetition with
occasional interruptions .

Continual Service Improvement (CSI) provides practical guidance in evaluating and improving the
quality of services, overall maturity of the ITSM Service Lifecycle and its underlying processes at
three levels within the organization
VALUE TO BUSINESS
 IMPROVEMENT
• Outcomes that when compared to the ‘before’ state show a measurable increase in a desirable
metric or decrease in an undesirable metric.
• Example:
• ABC Corp achieved 15% reduction in failed changes through implementation of a formal
Change Management process.
 BENEFITS
 The gains achieved through realization of improvements usually but not always expressed in
monetary terms
 Example:
o ABC Corp’s 15% reduction in failed changes has saved the company $ 395, 000 in
productivity and re-works cost in the first year.

 RETURN OF INVESTMENT (ROI)

 The difference between the benefit (saving) achieved and the amount expended to
achieve that benefit, expressed as a percentage. Logically one would like to spend a little
to save a lot.
 Example:
o ABC Corp spent $ 200,000 to establish the formal Change Management process that
saved $395, 000. The ROI at the end of the first year of operation was therefore $195,
000 or 97.5 %.
 VALUE OF INVESTMENT (VOI)

• The extra value created by establishment of benefits that include non-monetary or long-term
outcomes, ROI is a subcomponent of VOI.
• Example:
• ABC Corp’s establishment of a formal Change Management process (which reduced the
number of failed changes) improved the ability of ABC Corp to respond quickly to
changing market conditioned and unexpected opportunities resulting un an enhanced
market position,, In addition, it promoted collaboration between business units and IT
organization and freed up resources to work on other projects that otherwise may not
have been completed.
INTANGIBLE BENEFITS
• Increase organizational competency
• Reduction of redundancy, increases business throughput
• Minimized lost opportunities
• Assured regulatory compliance that will minimize cost and reduce risk
• Ability to react to change rapidly.