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...
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...
