Tackling the Challenges of Incident Management

An incident is an event or an occurrence that could lead to the disruption of services and operations of an organisation or could lead to them making losses. Incident management is a process where a team of engineers working in a firm who identify, analyse and correct such incidents to prevent recurrences.

Incident management is a complex process that requires quick and efficient work. There are some challenges that one has to tackle to ensure a smooth running system. Some of them are:

Roles –
Incident management is a complex process that involves the functioning of many workers coherently. The complexity of the roles and incidents increases with the size of the organisation. Proper role allotment and workers following their duties is extremely important for the smooth running of the system. The entire set up of the system is dependent on the enactment of the roles by the workers. The key to setting up the system is to ensure this is no bureaucracy and work is not disrupted.

Organisation –
There are various aspects of an organisation that must be handled effectively to tackle incidents. Every firm is different in structure and size and requires a unique organisation of responsibility, implementation, technology and units. The implementation is a logical process that is required to have a narrow structure and strong leadership. The entire process lies in the efficient and proper implementation of the process. Even great ideas fail if their implementation is lacking and faulty.

Cost and Efficiency–
In case the costs for the process is high and the process is inefficient in comparison to its price is a setback to the management. Now the danger of an inefficient process is that the incidents will not be solved and losses could multiply. The best way forward is to try and reduce costs and reducing the dependency on manpower. Efficiency can be ensured with consistency for resolving all incidents, escalating incidents quickly with ease and automation.

Run books –
Run books are an essential part of the incident management process. Run books enable easy record keeping of incidents. One can practice by conducting pre-mortems and resolve repetitive and similar incidents quickly with already logged incidents. Now managing and regularly updating the run book is highly essential to ensure time is not being wasted on repetitive incidents and to track the incident logs.

It is pertinent to overcome challenges as an incident management system is what keeps the boat afloat for every organisation. Creating the most unique and suitable process for your organisation and implementing it in the right way and efficiently is of utmost importance. Challenges attack everywhere, the key lesson is how you fight them and come out stronger.