It is imperative that processes are in place that ensure a major incident is identified. Typical alert and identification scenarios include:
The Service Desk notices a large volume of similar incidents that seem connected to a single issue
End users contact the Service Desk or use a self-service portal to notify the Service Desk of a critical service outage
Event monitoring alerts business-critical services that there is a failure or potential failure
Technical Resolving Groups identify a major incident or potential major incident during routine maintenance work.
A career in Major Incident Management is exciting and can be high profile. You engage with nearly all of the Operational staff at different stages, with your communications reaching the entire End User community, including C-suite Executives. Whilst the role can be thrilling, it is also easy to let a few bad habits seriously impact on your credibility and career. Here are 3 common mistakes to keep a check on and avoid: 1 . Don’t think win/lose, think win/win It can be difficult to strike the right balance; your primary objective is to restore normal service operations as quickly as possible, and often that means being assertive. However being too dominant with Technical Staff might get you the result...
Navy Seals are the elite. Their training is extremely tough both physically and mentally. Here are 3 lessons Major Incident Managers can learn from Navy Seals: 1 – Set milestone goals Breaking down a goal into manageable milestones makes an overall big goal clearer, less complex and more manageable. This kind of detailed planning requires discipline, but it makes positive outcomes far more likely. Seals are excellent at planning and achieving big goals that are often complex with many variables. 2 – Visualise success to overcome failure As you would expect, Seal training is tough. Throughout the training 75% of people who make it on to the initial 6-month training end up washing out. Seals understand their objective, and they...
Let us start by addressing what a major incident is in the context of IT services. We define a major incident as an event that creates a significant, negative impact or urgency for a business or organisation. They demand a response, strategy and direction beyond the capabilities of a standard incident management processes. Example 1: The value of Major Incident Management for large organisations Take a major retailer as an example… Many large, well-known major retailers rely on self-service point of sale devices and point of sale terminals to take payment for goods. In busy periods they may take around £4,000 of transactions per second. That equates to £240,000 per minute and £14,400,000 per hour. That is a substantial loss of earnings for every...
Major Incidents will require the focus and efforts of many individuals within your IT Operation. Detailed here are the roles involved and an overview of their remit when a major incident occurs. Every Operation is different and this is to be used as a framework, not necessarily verbatim. The Service Desk The Service Desk is the main point of contact for affected end users during service outages or degradation. Contact with the Service Desk is in the form of requests and reporting of incidents. The Service Desk is usually the first team to be made aware of a potential or actual IT major incident. During major incidents it should provide updates to the end users by way of announcements...
