Problem Management is responsible for managing all aspects of the problem lifecycle. It covers both the ITIL Service Operation as well as the ITIL Continuous Service Improvement stages of an ITIL service lifecycle. Service delivery quality can be affected by problems. Problems that arise in IT service providers must be addressed promptly and properly. Problem management is the process of addressing issues quickly and efficiently to minimize disruption and customer dissatisfaction. It is taught in ITIL online courses. Let’s take a look at the objectives as well as the basic principles. An ITIL Foundation practice exam can help you assess your knowledge of ITIL problem management.
The objectives of the problem management process
The goal of an IT service provider is to prevent problems from happening and to also prevent the root causes of them. An IT service provider’s primary goal is to provide services to customers and meet agreed service levels. Service delivery and service degradation can be caused by incidents and problems. Problem management aims to prevent most problems. Problem management also seeks to identify the root causes of problems and find a permanent solution.
Recurring incidents are the second objective. If a problem or incident is fixed, it is unlikely that the root cause has been identified. Customers are more unhappy with recurring incidents than they are with a new issue. Let’s say a customer reports a problem with his money. The same problem occurs again after the IT service provider has fixed the problem. This will make him more unhappy than if he was faced with a new problem. Recurring incidents must be eliminated.
The third and final objective of problem management is to reduce the impact of incidents that cannot be prevented. Even though problems can be fixed, sometimes problems cannot be prevented. The IT service provider must try to minimize the impact of this unpreventable problem. This will reduce customer dissatisfaction.
The basic principles of problem management
Many problems are unique and require individual attention. While there may be multiple incidents that are related to the same IT Service provider problem, many problems are unique and require special attention. An application server failure can lead to problems such as login problems, late service responses, or failures in service requests. This is a unique problem that can be fixed. It is possible to avoid the other problems.
Incidents that are related to underlying problems
It is possible that some incidents could recur due underlying problems. A permanent solution, for example, can be expensive, so it is best to “live” with the problem. Let’s take an example. Let’s say that a service queries user details from a database. This database can be down and service will also fail. The costs of creating an active-active and active-standby database systems were analyzed during planning. It was concluded that the cost of creating an active-active database system as well as its maintenance would be more than the revenue expected from the service. An active-standby database system was therefore implemented. In the event of an active-standby database failure, it will take five minutes for the standby database to be activated and take over service requests. During this time, all service requests will be rejected. But, if it is necessary,