Incident Management for Operations

Chapter 1. Evaluating the Incident Response PROCESS

Definition of incident:

An occurrence, either human-caused or a natural phenomenon, that requires action or support by emergency services personnel to prevent or minimize loss of life or damage to property and/or natural resources. (National Fire Protection Association)

An unplanned interruption to an IT service or reduction in the quality of an IT service. (ITIL)

As you read this sentence, IT incidents are happening all over the world. The response to those incidents comes in many forms, from one person working on an issue to a large group of people dialing into a conference call bridge or typing into a plethora of communications/workflow/productivity applications from anywhere around the globe. Those responders may use ITIL process or DevOps principles or an internally created system or some other method. The response may be completely organized or totally chaotic. But, one way or another, IT incidents are being resolved. The real question is: “Are they being resolved as quickly as they could be?”

Note

For illustration throughout the book, we will use a conference call bridge as the example of IRT communications. There are many methods used to communicate during an incident, including verbal and written communications across many technology platforms, and not all IRTs use conference bridges for incident response, but depicting the spoken word serves as an effective platform to illustrate interpersonal communications.

The ...