We watched a video recently with Charlie Munger (Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, controlled by Warren Buffet). Charlie Munger is an extremely successful and respected man. In this video Charlie talks about his 10 rules of success, it struck us that the Major Incident Management community would benefit from his wisdom. A shortened version of his 10 rules are: Always keep learning Deserve what you want (i.e. work hard to earn trust and respect) Know the edge of your own competency Be a survivor Practice the right approach Understand what you are doing Invest in trust Know all of the big ideas Swim as competently as you can (accept that you will fail sometimes, we all do) Don’t submerge into self-pity...
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...
Note: The Best Practice in IT Major Incident Management and it’s components are a framework and your organisation’s other existing processes should be considered when incorporating Major Incident Management into Operations. Whilst the primary objective of Major Incident Management is to restore normal service to End Users, there are three phases that have sub objectives that contribute to the primary objective. The three phases of the Best Practice Major Incident management Process: The initial 15 minutes (of major incident identification) The post 15 minutes (n.b. this can last hours or sometimes days) The resolution (and closure of the major incident) The initial 15 minutes phase In the initial 15 minutes of major incident identification the key objectives are: Validation (that there...
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...
