Module 5: Proactive Processes
Problem Management
Some suggestions and guidance to help you assign roles and responsibilities in problem management are shown in the table below.
Role
Suggested representatives
Comments
Process owner
Person with overall responsibility for problem management, for example:
- Network manager
- ICT co-ordinator.
This is likely to be the person responsible for technical support.
Problem manager
Person, or people (collectively known as the service desk), responsible for maintaining a log of problems and tracking their progress to resolution.
The service desk administrator should fulfil this role. See FITS Service Desk for more details.
Problem logger
Person, or people, responsible for identifying problems and creating new problem records, for example:
- Technicians
- Network manager
This role is usually fulfilled by technical staff.
Problem resolver
Person, or people, responsible for investigating, diagnosing and resolving problems, for example:
- Technicians
- Network manager
This role is usually fulfilled by technicians although it may be necessary to involve more senior technical staff. Note that the problem resolver must not be an incident resolver in incident management.
Roles and functions in the problem management process
- Service desk to note on the incident sheet that the problem has been passed to problem management
- Service desk to log, monitor and track the progress of the problem
- Service desk or technician to spot trends
- Technician support to action problems raised from incident management
- Technician support to progress unresolved incidents through the problem management process
- Technician assisting with the handling of major incidents and identifying the root causes
- Technician preventing the replication of problems across multiple systems
- Any additional first line support groups, such as configuration management or change management specialists to be consulted
- Second-line and third-line support groups, including specialist support groups and external suppliers
- User to keep the service desk informed of any further changes to the state of the affected equipment (sometimes computers start working again when different incidents are resolved).
Additional functions that form part of problem management
- Developing and maintaining the problem control process
- Reviewing the efficiency and effectiveness of the problem control process
- Producing management information
- Allocating resources for the support effort
- Monitoring the effectiveness of error control and making recommendations for improving it
- Developing and maintaining problem and error control systems
- Reviewing the efficiency and effectiveness of proactive problem management activities
The scale depends on the time required for the Problem Management process
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