Problem
Management
ISD Division
ITIL
Office of State Finance
Contents
Office of State Finance
Purpose of Problem Management
Roles
Process
Policy
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Contents
Office of State Finance
Purpose of Problem Management
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Terms (Service Operations)
Office of State Finance
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Incident
Problem
Service Request
Something is broken or about
to break.
Underlying “root-cause.”
Routine pleas for help – but
nothing is broken. These
include items like “can you tell
me Joe Blow’s phone
number”, “can you unlock my
account”, and “will you reset
my password.”
Repair as quickly as possible.
Remains open until
underlying issue is resolved.
Open incidents are measured
against SLAs.
Open Problems are not
measured against SLAs.
Creates “work-arounds.”
ITIL Training
Problem Guidelines
Office of State Finance
There is no time SLA target associated with
problem resolution. Resolution of the root cause
of a problem may take hours or days or even
years.
Problems do not need prior approvals to be
worked and resolved. They only need to be
prioritized to work the most critical problems first.
If it appears that root cause identification and
resolution are not readily apparent and the impact
is medium or high, effort should be focused first
on providing a suitable documented work around.
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Problem Prioritization
Office of State Finance
Problems use the same prioritization as incidents. To prioritize,
the impact and severity must be assessed.
Problem Priority
2-Medium


One or two personnel
Degraded Service Levels but still
processing within SLA constraints

Multiple personnel in one physical
location
Degraded Service Levels at or below
SLA constraints
Cause of problem falls across multiple
functional areas




1-High
Impact
3-Low
Impact: People & Service
Severity: Time


All users of a specific service
Personnel from multiple agencies are
affected
Public facing service is unavailable
Any item listed in the Crisis Response
tables
Severity
3-Low
2-Medium
1-High
User cannot
User cannot perform Major portion of a
perform a portion critical time
critical service is
of their duties.
sensitive functions
unavailable
3-Low
3-Low
2-Medium 2-Medium
1-High
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1-High
2-Medium
1-High
1-High
Contents
Office of State Finance
Roles
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Roles
Office of State Finance
 OSF ISD Service Desk
 Ensure that all problems received by the Service
Desk are recorded in CRM
 Delegates responsibility by assigning problems to the
appropriate provider group for resolution based upon
the categorization rules
 Performs post-resolution customer review to ensure
that all work services are functioning properly
 Quality Assurance
 Owns all reported problems
 Prepare reports showing statistics of problems
resolved / unresolved
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Roles
Office of State Finance
 Service Provider Group
 Composed of technical and functional staff involved in
supporting services
 Perform root cause analysis of the problem and
develop potential solutions
 Test potential solutions and develop implementation
plan
 Problem Reporter
 Anyone within OSF / ISD can request a problem case
to be opened.
 The typical sources for problems are the Service
Desk, Service Provider Groups, and proactive
problem management through Quality Assurance.
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Contents
Office of State Finance
Process
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Process Flow
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Process Flow - Identification
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Anyone within OSF / ISD can request that a problem case be
opened.
All initial information relative to problem will be logged,
especially related incidents.
Before continuing the Service Desk will verify the related
service having the issue and correlate it with an existing
service and SLA.
After problem verification, the Service Desk will attempt to
establish incident severity and impact which define priority.
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Process Flow – Analyze &
Resolve
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Primary root cause analysis will be performed by the
Service Provider Group.
As soon as the problem is clearly documented with
identifying symptoms, a known error record will created
within CRM so that if additional incidents occur, they can be
tied to the existing problem.
Once the solution is determined, it should be implemented
following the Change Management Process.
Once the solution is implemented and verified, the problem
case may be closed.
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Contents
Office of State Finance
Policy
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Problem Policy
Office of State Finance
Problems must be logged with the
Service Desk before they are worked.
There is no SLA target date connected to
problem resolution.
If a work around for the problem has
been discovered, it should be provided to
the Service Desk and logged into CRM.
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