Managing major incidents

For an IT operations team, Major Incident Management is a critical and urgent process that demands deep analysis and a team of specialists to work on it. Because major incidents cause widespread disruption in a service and potential impact on the business, organizations need to establish a robust major incident management process which is appropriately supported by data.
Additionally, when advanced major incident configuration fields are enabled, Major Incident Managers can view the potential impact associated with major incident candidates. This capability helps them better manage the major incidents through the major incident workflow.

The following video (2:47) helps you to get an overview of Major Incident Management concept and the process:
 

icon-play.png https://youtu.be/Ovxtxfzt_QQ

 

Related topics

Managing-and-tracking-major-incidents

Functional roles and extended application access

Configuring-settings-to-launch-Microsoft-Teams-chat-from-incidents

The benefits include:

  • BMC Helix ITSM provides recommendations to promote major incident candidates to major incidents based on advanced major incident qualifiers. Major Incident Managers can view the recommendations and the potential impact of such major incident candidates and effectively manage them through the major incident workflow.
  • When major incidents are identified early, it minimizes loss of time, cost, and business value.
  • The same incident management screen is equipped to manage major incidents.
  • You do not need to switch between multiple tools or applications to track the status, form teams, or collaborate while resolving a major incident.

Scenario for managing major incidents

Scenario
In Apex Global, the company's VPN is down. Customers are unable to log in to the portal to view and receive services. Carl, the Service Desk agent, starts receiving a number of incidents on this issue. The issue is causing widespread impact in the organization in terms of data loss, criticality of service, and economic impact. He creates the VPN_network_issue incident. He then marks the incident as a major incident candidate and marks the following advanced major incident qualifier fields as Yes and assigns it to the relevant support group:

  • Data losses
  • Critical services affected
  • Economic impact

Susan, the Major Incident Manager, is assigned to the major incident candidate. Because Carl marked at least 2 advanced major incident qualifiers as Yes, BMC Helix ITSM recommends that the major incident candidate be promoted to a major incident. Susan analyzes the risks and proceeds further with the major incident management workflow.

Workflow for managing major incidents

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The following table describes the tasks to be performed when managing major incidents in BMC Helix ITSM and their reference documentation:

Task

Component

Role

Action

Reference

1

Incident Management in BMC Helix ITSM

Service Desk Agent

  • Creates an incident record
  • Marks the incident as a candidate for a major incident
  • Assigns the incident to a Major Incident Manager
  • Assigns the potential impact associated with the incident based on advanced major incident qualifiers

2

Incident Management in BMC Helix ITSM

Major Incident Manager

  • Views the recommendation if the major incident candidate qualifies to be marked as a major incident based on advanced major incident qualifiers
  • Forms the Major Incident Management team

3

Incident Management in BMC Helix ITSM

Communication Coordinator

  • Establishes collaboration rooms
  • Tracks the status of the major incident

4

Incident Management in BMC Helix ITSM

Major Incident Management team

  • Finds and implements workarounds to fix the major incident
  • Resolves the major incident

5

Incident Management in BMC Helix ITSM

Major Incident Manager

  • If required, creates emergency change requests
  • Follows up with Problem Management for root cause analysis

Results

The Apex Global company website is up and running after implementing the change request.

 

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