Focus on Problem,not incident

Without an effective Problem Management team, your organization is doomed to never learn from its mistakes and improve. However, in my years of implementation, I identified customers were able to deploy Incident Management Process easily, and it is not the case with Problem Management. And, this is a universal issue. 

Challenges faced implementing PM

Problem and Incident Management have a close relation. They must gear together to generate continuous improvement. However, Organization does not understand it clearly. The management is focussed on a good and flashy number. Hence, more emphasis is on Incident module which leads to mixing up of PM and IM in the same group, and it ends up in low results over time.

Most of the organizations depend on the reactive approach when dealing with failures. Just restoring service to normal operation via the incident management. They believe, practicing, Problem Management is a costly process and in some cases a time waster in their perspective.

The maturity of the organization towards the ITSM implementation. Engineers and Management find it less attractive as it doesn't give them a dopamine rush like they get during incident solving, especially in high-stress situations. It doesn't look fancy on excel sheets or powerpoint presentations because managers can't show off how quickly they resolved issues in the past week. This, in turn, results in an overall lack of will to invest time in Problem Management and CSI (which should be implemented at the same time) from all involved.

Lack of data/information! If you try to implement PM based on incidents you will fail. There is a huge gap between what happens, what is reported by the end user and what is categorized in a way, PM can use it! You need more information - especially from the client perspective!!! Organizations who implemented PM successfully rely additionally on Client Analytics!.

Recommendations:

The best way to to get organizations to utilize this process is to start training the Management and Stakeholders on the differences between IM and PM, and the multiple benefits of utilizing the PM process. This can be accomplished relatively easily, by completing an analysis of their current systems and showing them concrete evidence of where the process would reduce their cost and improve their efficiency.

By detailing to the senior managers or the decision makers how the processes and procedures you're proposing will, in fact, lower the IT cost over time to the organization or improve their revenues. You will be successful.

A problem as a key prerequisite for an incident. The later cannot exist without the former! Many people forget it is problem management that defines the fixes used in incident management. It is not about learning from mistakes it's about stopping incidents happening.

Finally

Problem Management is a way of life. It is the agreement of people across the organization that they are going to focus daily on mitigating or removing problems. Don't get tied down to ITIL definitions.

Start thinking about continuous improvement and document those. Select problems of interest for the organization, promote some of the templates and how to use it, and then you will see people asking for more. Eventually, you will have created a formal process to later implement or use the module in any ITSM tool. It should be difficult or long but not impossible.

P.S The article was written based on inputs from various experts. Thanks to all who were involved in the discussion.