As CMMI Consultants, you might have come across the question about What is incident and how it is defined in different standards like CMMI, ISO and ITIL? What are different tools you can use to manage incidents? As CMMI Consultant you can take guidance from the information below:

CMMI FAQ 0

7th May, 2019

What is an Incident?

Hello Guys, we are all interested or rather afraid of an “accident”. But today we are not talking about accidents. Today, we will discuss “incident”. One thing is sure – if we manage the incidents well, we can avoid the accidents.

Generally, an “incident” is “an instance of something happening; an event or occurrence.” As per Oxford Dictionary, the definition of “Incident” is “An unfortunate incident that happens unexpectedly and unintentionally, typically resulting in damage or injury.”

ISO 20000-1, the ISO Standard on IT Service Management, defines “incident” as “unplanned interruption to a service, a reduction in the quality of a service or an event that has not yet impacted the service to the customer”.

Speaking for IT Service, ITIL 2011, an incident is “an unplanned interruption to an IT service or reduction in the quality of an IT service or a failure of a Configuration Item that has not yet impacted an IT service”.

CMMI for SVC refers to “An indication of an actual or potential interference with a Service”.

There are common characteristics that emerge as a unifying element in these definitions:

• That an incident is sudden and unplanned
• That an incident is an interference or an interruption to continuity of activity or continuity of service.
• That an incident is a negative activity
• That an incident, if not handled or managed well, has the potential to damage the stakeholders including customers

This brings us to the substantive point of how to manage the incidents or Incident Management.

What is Incident Management?

Incident Management is the method/process/procedure/steps to manage the incident and restore a normal service operation as quickly as possible and to minimize the impact on business operations.

The Incident Management Cycle is implemented through the Process of Incident Management. Let us discuss the salient steps that are characteristics of an incident management cycle.

Process for Incident Management

• Detection / Identification of Incident.
• Recording / Logging of Incident
• Reporting / Communicating about Incident
• Classification of Incident based on its severity
• Prioritization of the Incident
• Approach to Incident Resolution
• Assignment of Responsibility
• Resolution of the Incident
• Tracking the Incident to Closure
• Closure of Incident
• Analyzing the incident, Conduct of the Root Cause Analysis and taking preventive actions to eliminate its recurrence.
• Record the data in the Incident Management Repository
• Evaluation on regular basis and Lessons Learnt

CMMI for Services [CMMI-SVC] provides for Incident Resolution and Prevention [IRP] as a Practice Area.

Some Tools being used for Incident Management

• JIRA Service Desk
• Remedy Tool
• Freshservice
• PagerDuty
• Zendesk
• Spiceworks
• Mantis BT
• Victorops
• OpsGenie
• Logic Manager

We are not affiliated with any of the above-mentioned tool and we do not endorse any tools.

Copyright Disclaimer:

• CMMI is the registered mark of the CMMI Institute.
• ISO 20000-1 is the international standard for IT service management from International Organization for Standardization
• ITIL 2011 is Information Technology Infrastructure Library, and has been owned by AXELOS, a joint venture between Capita and the UK Cabinet Office.