What is the difference between an incident and a request?
Helpdesks and IT service desks often address more user issues than just incidents. One of the more common issues they handle are user requests. While an incident is a disruption of normal processing (something is broken), a request is simply an activity that requires assistance to complete (something that needs to be done). Examples of requests might be setting up systems for a new employee, granting access to data, or performing an update to system software. While incidents and requests often follow similar processes and may leverage the same tools for tracking, requests do not represent a failure and disruption – they are a part of normal business processing.
What is a Major Incident and how is it different?
There is a special classification of incidents for crisis situations called Major Incidents that represent widespread disruption to business operations, a critical security risk or inability for the company to deliver on expectations to customers. Major incidents often include increased management involvement to assess impacts and coordinate communication, enhanced incident manager involvement as well as more formalized decision-making structures. Major incidents are highly time-sensitive and could include engaging resources outside of normal business hours to assist in diagnosis and resolution of the issue.
What is the difference between incident management and problem management?
The terms incident and problem are frequently used interchangeably, however there is an important distinction to be made between them. Incident management is concerned with addressing the symptoms and impact of an issue while problem management is concerned with addressing the cause and potential for recurrence of the issue.
The timeline of an incident starts when normal operations are disrupted and ends when service is restored, and normal operations resume. The timeline of a problem starts when the underlying issue was introduced into the environment (often a change in configuration, release, or change in usage) and ends when the underlying issue is removed (which may not be until a future release). Problem management includes activities like root cause analysis, risk assessment and the prioritization and selection of a long-term fix solution.