A long-standing debate in the industry, should Major Incident Managers be technical? This question seems to be firmly dividing with very few people being undecided, they either strongly believe that yes, they should be, or no they should not. Well, we believe the answer is no, they should not be technical, but really it requires a little more explanation than that, and it depends… What size organisation are we talking about? It depends on the size of your organisation and Operations. In an ideal world, and one that most large Managed Service Providers and enterprise In-House Operations find themselves in, there would be dedicated Major Incident Managers, who do nothing but focus on Major Incident Management. After all, the...
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...
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...
Snippet: We reviewed over 200 job ads for the top jobs, CEO, CIO, Managing Director, IT Director and Head of Service Delivery to identify the most sought-after skills and how it relates to the skills and knowledge acquired by Major Incident Managers and positions them for career success. The article: It has long fascinated me that those that succeed in IT Major Incident Management often go on to succeed long-term in their careers. If I had to provide a solid guess at why that is, it would probably be something along the lines of: At it’s core, Major Incident Management is about Leadership, further to that, it is mostly about the leadership of people and resources who are not in...
