Problem Prioritisation

Fri, 26 Mar 2021 12:08:33 GMT

I am trying to come up with a prioritisation matrix based on impact and urgency, but from a Problem not Incident management perspective.

Does anyone have any experience of this and is this draft I have put together have any legs?

Fri, 26 Mar 2021 13:18:57 GMT

Hi Michael, I have worked with a number of organisations who have looked into the prioritisation of problems and the main issues always come down to the number of problems being raised (is the service that bad we should put an improvement in), how often is the service used, how many people is the problem impacting since the service is back up and running, what will it cost me to fix. Having said all that I have looked at your matrix and have the following observations

The Critical col should be covered off through Major Incident or Incident Management since the service has not been restored

I would suggest that a problem could not be catastrophic (being careful here) again because service will have been restored and may be running degraded, however the impact of a further incident could be catastrophic for the service

The High, Medium and Low definitions look ok but again I draw your attention to my introductory comment re impact on service, people etc. when you come to looking at P1, P2, P3 etc levels.

Hope this helps, also I would like to draw you attention to the new Communities of practice especially the Management of Service one where we have a number of experienced Problem Managers and may be this question could become a good discussion point at a future meeting

Fri, 16 Apr 2021 13:31:26 GMT

To build on Richard's fine response....

This matrix suggests Problems are more reactive to incidents that have happened. This is not unusual and it's often harder than it might seem to move from reactive to proactive Problem Management.

The way I've described to those less familiar with Service Management is reactive Problem Management will stop a previous incident from happening again. Proactive Problem Management will identify possible causes of future incidents, and stop them from happening in the first place.

If the Strategy is to want to move into Proactive Problem Management then prioritisation that promotes work on proactive problems will help. As a tip that can often look like Risk Management good practice, assessing the impact + probability of a problem against the impact of an incident should it occur x the probability of that incident happening.

In my experience there is a lot of synergy between Proactive Problem Management, Service Improvement (CSI) and proactive processes/practices such as Availability Management.

Hope that helps, and to further highlight Richard's mention of the Community of Practices to cover this and other topics.