Problem Management Transformation

Problem management is the process that defines as the underlying cause of one or more incidents. The more effective the Problem Management team, the less you hear the question, "What caused the incident?" There will be plenty of answers from business consultants, executives, and customers. But the Problem Managers knows better.

Transforming Problem Management

The matured Problem Management function should bring Strategic value and position as a go-to service for IT Solving needs. This requires a Transformation from the monotonous way of approaching the Problem management process.

The Transformation can take place as a step-by-step process aimed at making Problem management into a more strategic practice.

A detailed study is required to understand the current position of your Problem management process, the pain areas, and a plan to fix the gaps identified. The journey to transform could be classified into four major focus areas which are Strategy, Design, Operations, and Enablers.

Strategy

• Review Skills of Problem Management Team - Review and Certify the skills of the problem management team (Problem Governance & Operations Team) as ‘fit for purpose'. This is meant to identify and resolve the people skills required to run this process/ function.
• Positioning Problem management - Conduct a study of how the consumer of the current Problem Management process perceives the current process. The end state should be the consumers to recognize the Problem management process as a strategic process that helps businesses to take decisions based on Problem management recommendations.
• Maturity Baselining - Review the existing Problem Management process (step-by-step) using a maturity accessor questionnaire agreed upon. This is required to baseline the process maturity. Understand the score from the current state and plan to improve the scores with certain milestones.
• Customer Satisfaction - Survey primary users of Problem management practice, get a score and understand the pain areas them. Have a mitigation plan.

It is important to have frequent surveys with consumers, this will create an avenue to continuously improve.

• Problem Kickoff - Review and optimize the communication process by a correct and smooth articulation between the main 3 different calls (Incident bridge, PIR (post-incident review) and Problem Kick off call).

Design

• Review Problem management process, Operations level agreements, and Handshake between Incident and Problem management. Optimize and remove unnecessary steps to avoid delays in kick-starting Problem investigation
• Review and Rebuild Stakeholder Metrics, Publish RACI and Publish Problem Management Dashboards & Reports in feasible intervals.
• Continual Service Improvements - The problem management process is one of the sources of CSI, making sure the handshake process is stable and active. Initiate discussions with CSI teams and provide inputs proactively.

Operations

• Stakeholder Interview - The discussion will help you understand what is expected from Problem management by the stakeholders. Further, there is an opportunity to understand the pain areas. Interviews are important to understand the stakeholders' perspective also this will bring confidence in stakeholders that there is someone who is looking at the background of the incident.
• Data Analytics Frequency - Incident Trend Analysis and Health check monitoring data are key sources of Proactive Problem management, make sure to set a frequency and agree on the use cases that Problem management will further take to investigate.
• Workshops - Brainstorming sessions with the teams internally and also with the Problem analyst from Technical teams. This will help in understanding the process gap if any and the daily challenge the individual face to investigate the issue
• Problem Tickets Audits - This step is crucial to improve the quality of the tickets, a frequent periodic audit is to be performed in all the Problem tickets to evaluate the teams' performance. Establish a process, standardize the template and publish the audit results. This will improve the health of the tickets and directly points to the exact pain area.
• Knowledge Articles - Prepare knowledge articles specific to frequently asked questions. The documentation repository showcases the maturity of the process and operations readiness
• AI-Based Data Analytics - The future is Data science, makes use of AI Analysis to understand incident trends and automate creating problem records. This step will show the advancement of Problem Management Practice.

Enablers

• Have frequent connections with Problem Analysts/SME/Technical leads, this step is to build rapport to ease problem investigations and review SLAs with them to maintain the MTTR of the Problem tickets. If you have a vendor in the ecosystem periodic contract review would add value.
• BAU Handshake - The outcome of Problem investigations will be the corrective and Preventive actions. Make sure you have a forum to review if the actions recommended by Problem management are implemented and results are visible in the scope. This is the forum you will get the success story of Problem management practice.

The result of Transforming Problem management would elevate the operational maturity of problem management processes to par with the demands of the IT Organization and Targets speedy resolution and reduction in ETA of investigations and the underlying root causes.