The following overview describes the fundamentals of ITIL Incident Management. Also read how Infra supports Incident Management.

ITIL Incident Management aims to minimize disruption to the business by restoring service operation to agreed levels as quickly as possible.

Incident Management is often the first process instigated when introducing the ITIL quality framework to a Service Desk, and offers the most immediate and highly visible cost reduction and quality gains.

However, the effectiveness of Incident Management is closely aligned to the accuracy and design of the CMDB (Configuration Management Database), and its ongoing effectiveness is significantly aided by the implementation of ITIL Problem and Change Management.

The role of the ITIL Service Desk

The ITIL Service Desk provides a vital central point of contact between the customer and the IT organization. The Service Desk encompasses a range of services that reach beyond the typical Help Desk, including the ability to process incidents, problems, enquiries, change and service requests, and IT service management processes (e.g. Configuration Management).

The ITIL Service Desk is often seen as the 'front door' into an organization where quality service is delivered. Its purpose is to ensure that customers are able to resume their work as quickly as possible following a disruption to an IT Service, minimizing the adverse impact on business operation.

The relationship of Incident Management to other ITIL processes

The relationships of Incident Management with other core ITIL processes can be summarized as follows:

ITIL Problem Management

Problem Management assists Incident Management by:

• providing the next path to escalation and resolution (part of the Incident Lifecycle)
• establishing root cause and Known Errors
• supporting Incident Management in restoring services
• providing management reporting on historical data and trend analysis.

Also see: ITIL Problem Management

ITIL Change Management

Change Management assists Incident Management by:

• providing the Service Desk with information on current and future change activity, as well as change history
• providing controlled implementation of changes
• providing up-to-date information to customers on progress of change.

ITIL Configuration Management

Configuration Management assists Incident Management by:

• providing valuable information on how much of the IT infrastructure is affected, the Configuration Item (CI)
• relationships and the dependencies of other CIs
• providing up-to-date information on customers, owner and status of CIs
• assisting with identification of incidents of similar CI type.

ITIL Service Level Management

Service Level Management assists Incident Management by:

• providing performance metrics on incident response and resolution times
• establishing a contact point for customers when escalations are breached.

Related topics

• Problem Management
• Change Management
• Configuration Management
• Service Level Management

For more information on our products and services Contact EMC Infra

EMC Infra provides ITIL Service Management and Help Desk solutions including Incident Management, Problem Management, Configuration Management, Change Management, Release Management, Service Level Management and Availability Management software.