ITIL Problem Management Process In 3 Steps

There’re various components in the ITIL service management and ITIL problem management is one of them. Problem management is just one type of process that is likely to IT service management and it is tasked with managing the lifecycle of various hidden problems.

Every organization is looking forward to minimizing the problems and to achieve success quickly by detecting and providing the solution of tacky problems. Other than taking care of the problems, the project management also likely looks after the error in IT infrastructure and also confronts the incidents that users may have been facing.

In this article, we have discussed the step to lead for having a bright career in ITIL project management and the problem it has to face throughout the journey. So, let’s dig into details without wasting much time. 

About- Problems that ITIL problem manager has to face

There’re various types of problems that ITIL problem management has to face with such as problems received from the service desk, the problem regarding financial impact, and ITIL problems related to the design stage. 

But ITIL problem management has found out all of the solutions to the above problems. They have linked ITIL problem management directly to the incident management to solve the problem received from the service desk. To solve the problem regarding financial impacts, they have directly linked the ITIL management to financial management.

To solve the problems related to the ITIL service design stage, they are now finally linked to the ITIL continual service improvement where the problem occurs proactively. The ITIL problem management consists of long-term delivery and to go through hassle-free work, we have discussed the flow in just 3 steps.

#1 Receiving problems

To receive the problem

In the process of ITIL problem management, the problem would be received from various channels such as service desk, incident management process, event management process, proactive problem management as well as supplier or contractor.

Detection

Once the problem is received, the next step is the detection of that problem and then if the problem is valid, it would be logged in the system. Every problem is recorded as well as stored in the database. As the part of ITIL problem management process, several ways are available to log the problem in.

The important part of the ITIL problem management process delivers all the captured relevant data, so that team could find the root cause of the problem, and the relevant data can be found via the ticketing system. For example, any of the important data comes with its particular time, date the incident, troubleshooting steps, symptoms, etc.

Categorization

The IT service provider would give various problems, but as the part of ITIL problem management process, it is essential to categorize the problem of the same category. From various categories, the main and the second category would be assigned, so that the main problem can be solved quickly.

Prioritization

In this final step, one has to look after which problem is most important, and which is fewer ones. Prioritization is the most important step in ITIL problem management, and it depends on the impact of the problem on business, user, and its urgency.

Urgency is the time limit provided by the business and to solve the problem in that time limit is the lookout of ITIL problem management. By prioritization, the one would get the idea about the main problem and hence by solving it, the individual would meet the business time limit.

#2 Investigation

Investigation & diagnosis

In this step, the priority problem is investigated and diagnosed. Furthermore, its details of the priority problems are recorded and updated in the configuration management system.

High priority problem- the problem which has a huge impact on business compared to other problems. It is essential to solving the high priority problem first as it has a great impact on business.

Workaround  

Not all problems are easy and can meet the deadline provided, some of them are tacky that is can take months as well. If a permanent solution to the problem is not available for a while then the ITIL problem management would look at the temporary solution, that’s what the workaround is for.

One must check out that is there any workaround for solving the problem on temporary bases. With the help of a workaround, the service desk restores the services with a temporary solution.

Known error database

In this final step, the problem with its workaround is recorded in the known error database. If the problem is repeated in the report, then the IT service provider will look at how the problem was solved earlier. Moreover, service personnel could also be able to deal with the problem faster.

#3 Change management

Resolution

If the ITIL problem management has found the problem solution permanently then the resolution is found. If the root cause of the problem has been identified and has a permanent solution, it is defined as a resolution of the problem.  

Change

In this step, one has to check whether the problem requires change. If yes, then the change management process would trigger, evaluate the request, and implement the change. After changing the problem, if one has to fix it permanently then the earlier records in the known error database would be removed and it would be updated to the change.

Major problem

If the major problem review executed after the closure of the problem, it means there’s something in between went wrong. The problem management team would view the entirety of the difficult records and would make sense of that what turned out badly.

This step is necessary to avoid any of the problems in the future. All of the problems discussed and solved are logged in to the service knowledge management system so that if anyone wants to reference it in the future, they can directly go to the service knowledge management system.

Hence, the above was everything about the ITIL problem management process in just 3 steps. The above steps are discussed in the most organized way to solve any of the problems.