Major Incident Management for IT Operations

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There are numerous books on incident management from different best practices, but few that provide a comprehensive guide to major incident management for information technology IT. The ITIL® IT Operations Manual has 3 paragraphs dedicated to major incident management. Major incident management has become a career choice as many businesses employ specialists responsible for returning services to normal as soon as possible after a major incident while minimising impact to the business. Hence, this book has been written focusing on those elements of major incident management which were not covered in this level of detail by best practice frameworks or by other authors. This book has been written considering the challenges faced by major incident managers focusing on the definition and establishment of a major incident management process, roles and responsibilities, showing value through matrices and self-management during a major incident.

This book takes the reader through all aspects of major incident management:

1. Introduction to Major Incident Management – A high level introduction discussing what a major incident is and what major incident management is and is not.

2. Defining What Constitutes a Major Incident – Rules for assigning priorities to Incidents, including the definition of what constitutes a major incident as agreed between IT and the business. It outlines sequential steps which could help define which incidents should trigger the invocation of the major incident process.

3. Define Interfaces with Other Functions – Defines the relationship with all stakeholders, building the cross-functional team.

4. Define the Engagement and Escalation Plan – Processes that need to be in place to ensure rapid engagement when a major incident is reported.

5. Major Incident Management Tools and Infrastructure – These will enable efficient, effective and rapid resolution of major incidents.

6. Define the Major Incident Management Process – The sequence of steps that should occur following a major incident being reported. This includes process flow charts and the definition of roles and responsibilities.

7. Roles and Responsibilities – Agreed and defined responsibilities for all of the cross-functional major incident management team members.

8. Communication Plan – Defined and agreed plan to communicate a major incidents status across all stakeholders.

9. Post Major Incident Review – Identify lessons learnt to enable continuous service improvement and handover to problem management.

10. SLA’s, OLA’s and UC’s – Defining and agreeing the major incident management service level agreements with the business and the operating level agreements and third party underpinning contracts required to support these agreements.

11. Major Incident Management Matrix – Measuring performance against service level agreements and key performance indicators.

12. Major Incident Manager Self-Management – Tips and tricks for the major incident manager to manage the incident as effectively and efficiently as possible in stressful scenarios.