In the context of IT Services Major Incident Management is an all-encompassing term. It describes the:
Process – The series of steps and actions taken in order to achieve service resolution and restoration of ‘business as usual’ services.
Function – Your organisation’s Major Incident Management function is formed by the roles that perform the processes. These can be individuals, a department or multiple departments.
Service – The combination of roles and processes delivered to an end-to-end Major Incident Management service.
So, IT Major Incident Management is the process, people, and resources an organisation utilises to manage a major incident. To learn what a major incident is click here.
It is worth noting that Major Incident Management is different to Crisis Management. Let us explain… A crisis is a disruptive and unexpected event that can be caused by various issues. A crisis is not necessarily IT related. Examples include negative publicity in media, defects with products or services (not IT defects), a supply chain issue, or negative social media activity.
Crisis management is the process by which an organisation deals with the crisis and manages the organisation’s stakeholders, customers, suppliers etc. Crisis management exists to protect a company’s service or products, as well as its reputation and brand. Most of the time a crisis does not impact day-to-day IT operations.
IT Major Incident Management however, focuses only on dealing with IT outages of business critical services. Due to the fact that these days most organisations rely heavily on technology, an IT major incident often results in a crisis, BUT rarely does a crisis cause an IT major incident.