Handling incident escalations
If an incident request is escalated to the service owner, the service owner consults with the specialists who were handling the request to understand the request's current status and what solutions have been tried already.
If the service owner determines that the best way to restore service is through the continuity site, the service owner escalates the incident request to the on-duty manager to implement the continuity site strategy (see Reassigning incident requests for information about how to do this).
If activating a continuity site is not practical, the service owner determines whether service can be restored through the change management process. If possible, the service owner creates a change request (see Creating-a-change-request for information about how to do this).
The resolution of an incident request is performed using the change management process when the resolution requires a change that will:
- Have a negative affect on the service during the service hours (defined by the SLA)
- Change the functionality of a service
- Require an update to the BMC Atrium CMDB
If the change management process is needed, the service owner also consults with the specialists assigned to the incident request to understand the risks that might cause the change implementation to fail, and what affect, if any, the change will have on the users. Through this consultation, they develop a strategy to minimize the affect of the change. When this is done, the service owner asks the specialist to implement the change as an emergency change.
If change management is not required, the service owner makes sure that the most appropriate specialists continue to resolve the incident within the incident management process.
The role of service owner is performed by the on-duty manager when the service owner of the affected service is not available.
The following figure provides an overview of the escalation handling process as described by the BMC Service Management Process Model:
Escalation handling
