The benefits of taking a formal approach to Problem Management include the following:
- a standard way to approach every problem - this saves time
- a reduction in the number of incidents
- permanent solutions - there will be a gradual reduction in the number and impact of problems
and known errors, as those that are resolved stay resolved
- learning from your mistakes - based on the concept of learning from past experience. The
process provides the historical data to identify trends, and the means of preventing failures and
of reducing the impact of failures.
- better first-time fix rate of incidents with a knowledge database available to the Service Desk
and technicians when a call is first logged.
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If Problem Management is not used the following may be the result
- a purely reactive school facing up to problems only when the service to users has already been
disrupted
- a school confronted with losing faith in the quality of the technical support with high costs and
low motivation for both users and technicians, since similar incidents have to be resolved
repeatedly and solutions are not provided.
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Problem Management's responsibility is to ensure that incident information is documented in such
a way that it is readily available to service desk staff and technicians. The information should be
recorded so that it is easily referenced by simple and detectable triggers from new incidents.
Regular inspection can ensure the continued relevance of documentation in the light of changing
- technology
- available external solutions
- school practices and requirements
- in-house skills
- frequency and impact of recurring incidents
- interpretation of internal best practice.
It is important that the process for recording incidents and problems can be reviewed.
- Staff using the information should be trained to understand the depth and power of the
information available, how to access and interpret it, and their role in providing feedback on its
relevance and ease of use.
- A suitable spreadsheet or database for the information.
- Development of an integrated service management tool (see Service Desk) which can capture
the information at logging or analysis stage of the incident handling process.
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The benefits of taking a formal approach to Problem Management include the following:
- improved quality of the ICT service. High-quality reliable service is good for the school
leaders, teachers and students. It is also good for the productivity and morale of the
technical support staff
- incident volume reduction. Problem Management is instrumental in reducing the number of
incidents that interrupt the school day
- permanent solutions. There will be a gradual reduction in the number and impact of
problems and known errors as those that are resolved stay resolved
- improved organisational learning. The Problem Management process is based on the
concept of learning from past experience. The process provides the historical data to
identify trends, and the means of preventing failures and of reducing the impact of failures,
resulting in improved productivity
- eventually a number of incidents can be resolved by the Service Desk There will be a better
first-time fix rate at the Service Desk as Problem Management enables the Service Desk
to know how to deal with problems and incidents that have previously been resolved and
documented.
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The benefits of Problem Management can be weakened by:
- absence of a good incident control process, and thus the absence of detailed historical
data on incidents (necessary for the correct identification of problems)
- failure to link incident records with problem/error records, means a failure to gain many of
the potential benefits -this is a key feature in moving from reactive support to a more
planned and proactive support approach
- lack of management or leadership commitment, so that support staff (usually also involved
with reactive Incident control activities) cannot allocate sufficient time to structural Problem-
solving activities
- the undermining of the role of the Service Desk, all incident reports must come through the
Service Desk and not direct to the technican. Difficulties will arise if the Service Desk is
dealing with multiple reports of incidents and the technician is not fully aware of the extent
of the problem
- failure to set aside time to build and update the call log or incident sheets which will
restrict the delivery of benefits
- an inability to determine accurately the impact on the school of incidents and problems;
consequently the critical incidents and problems are not given the correct priority.
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