PROBLEM MANAGEMENT: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES - PART 2

“Agastya, I would like to know & understand from you the challenges faced while implementing Problem Management” Prashanth asks.

“Problem Management concepts are interpreted & differentiated in two ways/methods; Reactive & Proactive Problem Management”

“Reactive is post incident occurrences, Analyzing and resolving the causes of incidents” Narasimha quickly adds

“Proactive includes the performing occurred incidents trending analysis to identify potential weaknesses; mainly to detect & prevent future problems/incidents” Raghu who was silent till now, quickly adds his inputs.

“Very true” Agastya nods head.

“The challenges faced are many; firstly, buy in from members and management due to lack of understanding on the concept” Agastya starts to explain.

“Agree; but since you and your team have given us trainings & also shared knowledge on the concepts in almost all the meeting so it should not be an issue now” Narasimha clarifies.

“We will have Class Based trainings for all members and also we can come up with E-learnings on problem management. Sure, this will be taken care” Prashanth assures Agastya.

“Secondly, Tool issues” Agastya says.

“Previous ticketing tool did not have problem management module opened for our account but now the module is accessible so we will go ahead and use it” Raghu adds.

“I remember this guy & his team used to torture us to extract all incidents and to classify all the incidents manually” Rajeev says.

“I understand the pain but that was the only option we had; we wanted to initiate & imbed problem management practice in to our account & also to members” Agastya provides explanations.

“True if we have supported you then till now we would have had practice institulized across account” Narasimha adds.

“Very true, we wouldn’t have this brainstorming session” Rajeev says as everyone bursts in to laugh.

“Manual effort of going back to each incident which are closed and looking in to work logs/journals to understand the issue and workarounds/temporary solution provide was very huge and many members were not willing to perform this activity” Agastya explains.

“And also challenge was member who had worked on the incident was not the one who was classifying so it took lot of time for the member to understand the incident & its resolution steps, Which added more manual effort” Narasimha points out.

“To overcome discussed challenges we worked with onshore team & client; Problem management module has been opened in new ticketing tool and also Resolution Categorization section” Agastya explains.

“We have started using the problem management module but still way to go on how & what, criteria and systematic usage of the module” Praveen says.

“I know that few service delivery groups are using the module but the criteria used to open problem ticket is not right, we should align and have common understanding on problem management practice across account” Agastya says.

“Problem Management process is already defined, we need to get educated on the process & also need to educate team members on the practices” Madhu Raj points out as he joins the conversation.

“Resolution Categorization; oh my god, there was lot of hall bol” Supreeth says.

“That was a biggest challenge” Agastya exhales.

“We understand; but now the exercise is completed right?” Madhu Raj asks.

“Couple of points which I want to reiterate; The Resolution categorization has been established in-line with well know industry concept, CTI – Category, Type & Item”

“Googling” Supreeth says

“Classification helps in problem management initial analysis & evaluation; it helps to route similar type of incidents” Sujan says.

“True, that Incident classification is not to identify problems but rather guide workflow” Nikhil adds.

“Googled; CTI is a three-tiered approach of defining "Category," a "Type" associated with the "Category," and an "Item" associated with the "Type." One popular approach suggests that Category and Type be "nouns," and Item be a "verb." Supreeth reads from google page.

“Too generic, can you explain bit details with example?” Rajeev asks.

“We can’t achieve 100% correct classification using any method but overall CTI classification is proven one; to give simple example, if Incident is related to Database then Category will be Database, then Type will be Oracle and item will be Up-gradation of oracle in simple terms Upgrade” Agastya explains with simple example.

“Oh that’s easy” Rajeev mutters and everyone nods.

“Oh really; it took us 4 months for us to follow up with teams to get CTI classifications for respective delivery groups” Agastya says with little hesitations.

“Did you get the information as per your expectations?” Madhu Raj questions.

“The classifications needs to be done with respect to each applications and what we have done now is at delivery group level, which is not the perfect solution and more ever the classifications were not effectively done” Agastya answers.

“Application level classifications” Rajeev asks.

“Yes, when you select CI in ticketing tool; the Three Tier classification should pop up with respect to CI” Agastya clarifies.

“You mean to say, we should have classifications that to 3 level with respect to all the 100+ applications we have in our group?” Praveen Gaur asks.

“Yes, that’s correct. Classification should be mapped to CI/Applications but in current scenario we have mapped it with Delivery groups which is not the perfect thing to do” Agastya explains.

“It would be very difficult to map classifications to CI considering the number of applications we support” Praveen says.

“The challenge is always there; thought let’s start at some point and make member to update the available resolution categorization whenever they are resolving & closing the incident which will save manual effort of classifying the incident later point of time and also as Narasimha pointed out, the person who resolved will identify the resolution categorization which will also reduce the effort of revisiting the work logs/journals” Agastya exhales.

“Very good and there is always a room for improvement; Classification mapping to CI can be done as we progress” Madhu raj adds.

“What about Operational categorization; why don’t we use that instead of Resolution categorization” Rajeev asks as he looks confused.

“Operational categorization is updated by the helpdesk and during their conversation with user, only certain information will be gathered and sometime it might be sufficient and sometime it might not be; so with the available info they will classify the incidents in operational section” Narasimha explains.

“The classification might be correct but during resolution of incident members who resolves incident will find out whether it is related to application, database or network and it gives an opportunity for the members to validate the classification provided by the helpdesk and the actual resolution categorization” Sujan adds more points.

“Also, we can do feasibility study or analysis or comparison of Operation and resolution categorization which will state the effectiveness of helpdesk classification and the interference information can also help helpdesk team to go back & identify the missing or focus areas, in turn helpdesk team can work towards effective classification” Nikhil adds.

“One thing which we missed is, Know Error data base; once we start implementing the practice we have to focus on prepare knowledge articles which should be used by the support members to resolve incidents as quickly as possible” Nikhil says.

“Nice to hear the inputs from all” Prashanth tandon says.