Having problems with problem management?

Frequently observed problems with problem management

Here’s some of the issues that I continue to see with many organizations’ approaches to problem management.

• “Incident Promotion”: With some organizations, problem management practices really aren’t problem management practices. Rather, “problems” are opened because the team that is dealing with an incident doesn’t want to deal with the incident any longer or an incident is being bounced from team to team. This is a cultural and leadership issue; not a problem management issue.
• Lack of results: Many organizations equate “problem management” only to completing an internally-developed root cause analysis (RCA) form. While cause analysis is important, a completed RCA shouldn’t be the only result from problem management. Other results like identification of improvement opportunities, the development and use of knowledge articles and workarounds, inputs to new or updated service and process designs, regular reviews of and improvements to problem management practices, and more are the kinds of outputs and results that effective problem management should produce.
• Only reactive: In many organizations, problem management is treated as if it is a fire department — only called upon when an IT product or service is “on fire.” There are no proactive problem management activities being performed.
• Problem criteria are not defined: Many organizations will initiate problem management activities only during a major incident (typically a good thing) or when x number of incidents occur within y time for z service (not bad either). Otherwise, the criteria of “what is a problem?” are undefined or don’t consider other significant factors like business risk, reputation loss or damage to customer and employee experience.
• Lack of management support: Many IT organizations haven’t done a good job in obtaining and maintaining management support for problem management activities. Part of the challenge of getting that support is that problem management activities generally aren’t part of the strategic direction of the organization. But a larger challenge is that management isn’t getting the reports and measures that tell the story they need to hear in terms that are relevant and meaningful. What is the business impact of a problem? How does resolving a problem benefit the organization in terms of money, resources, time, risk, regulatory compliance, reputation? In many cases, management just isn’t getting the answers they need to justify investing in a problem management practice.

Effective problem management is even more essential today

Today’s digital organizations are critically reliant on technology to do business, comply with regulations, drive efficiencies, deliver a differentiated experience and gain competitive advantage. Without technology, business processes come to a complete halt. Look at recent airline ground stops, failed software updates and credit card processing outages to grasp how deeply business processes are rooted in technology. And the financial impact of technology interruptions is staggering. For smaller businesses, the cost of a technology failure can range from $137 to $427 per minute. For larger organizations, it’s $5,600 to $9,000 per minute. 

But that’s not all. Today’s digital organizations are also faced with ever-changing, increasingly complex technology environments for doing business. Technology is a part of every part of an organization. Whether it’s the goods and services provided by suppliers, the service relationships between providers and consumers, or ever-emerging new capabilities, technology has a powerful influence on how digital organizations do business.

How can effective problem management help? Applying problem management techniques, such as component failure impact analysis or fault tree analysis, could be used to identify vulnerabilities in an organization’s use of technology. Actions can then be taken to avoid the impact of a potential technology failure, averting the time and money that would be spent dealing with a failure.