ITIL stands for Information Technology Infrastructure Library.
This is the result of a British initiative from the 1980s that aimed to archive and document all IT service management best practices and its practical application in business and governmental processes.
This work had such positive results that it became a worldwide benchmark in IT process standardization.
One of the areas in which this methodology is widely used is in ITIL Incident Management, ie incident management using the recommendations and good practices of this Library, which is now managed by Axelos.
ITIL V3 Incident Management
Within this context, it’s important to note that ITIL versions evolve and improve over time. Today, ITIL version 3, called ITIL V3, is the most current and is the version which should be followed.
See more details in this blog post: What does ITIL mean? A business and IT perspective
ITIL incident management process flow: step by step
IT service management following the ITIL approach has long been a global reality, whether in change management, leveraging business growth, digital transformation, or ITIL Incident management among many other applications.
See what the steps of an ITIL incident management process flow are, and other tips to use in your business.
ITIL Incident Management Process Flow Steps
The first tip is that it’s possible to model an ITIL incident management process flow that shows all the procedures of each task and the people involved.
Check out what they are:
1- Incident detection
Practice shows that most incidents originate from calls made by system users.
You must perform attendance through multiple channels, the most used being telephone and internet interfaces, such as chats (synchronous) and e-mails (asynchronous).
Therefore, it’s essential to create a history of every attendance. This will help define standardized procedures over time, making first-level attendants more and more prepared to resolve incidents without moving calls on to the next level.
See an example in this post of a help desk workflow based on ITIL incident management: Check out the details of the ITIL Service Desk Process Workflow
2- Classification
It’s necessary to define a classification methodology for the management of ITIL incidents in your company.
Classification encompasses two factors:
- Category: Defines the type of item that the incident affects, for example: Is the hardware or the software presenting problems?
- Priority: Define service priority. To do so, you should analyze two other factors:
- Impact: What consequences can this incident have on the company’s operations?
- Urgency: What is the estimated time to solve this incident?
3- Diagnosis
So, it’s time to understand what is happening exactly.
As we mentioned above, it’s essential to have a knowledge base (which evolves and becomes more and more complete over time) so that attendants can consult and can, by asking the right questions, detect how to solve an incident.
Who hasn’t heard the phrase: “Did you check if your modem is plugged in?” – when calling support for an internet service?
So, based on past experiences, callers are suggesting the solution to users or, if they can’t, they transfer the call to the next level, which can include on-site support, screen sharing, and many other features.
Learn more: ITIL methodology: What is it and how it improves client satisfaction
4- Resolution
As we saw above, resolutions are based on the use of the knowledge base.
Therefore, you need to verify that the incident has actually been resolved through known practices, or whether you need to trigger other areas of the company before moving on to closing the incident.
5- Closing the Incident
At this stage of the ITIL incident management process flow, you must properly formalize and file all details of attendance and then inform the user of the incident’s resolution.
6- Monitoring
It’s possible to notice that an incident doesn’t always resolve itself on the first call (like in the example we gave, in which it was enough to just plug the modem in).
Therefore, it’s essential that the customer service center is always attentive.
So, it’s necessary to create mechanisms and a workflow so that, anytime the user returns the call seeking information about the progress of the attendance, everything is accessible and they can be made aware of the measures being taken and even be given a duration until the final resolution.
Ready to use ITIL Incident Management Process Flow
This is just the theory about ITIL incident management. But, in practice, you can use our ready-made, fully-detailed process diagram, which can (via the process editor) generate documentation instantly.
Access here: ITIL Incident Management Process Flow. You can edit it any way you want, to fit the needs of your business.
Finally, here are some details of this workflow:
There are 2 pools, each with two lanes:
Stages of registration, categorization and attendance request:
So, just click on the boxes to define the actors, tasks and other information to create your work flow quickly.
Diagnostic and investigative steps:
You can also determine deviations and their types, all using simple, intuitive operating menus, see:
Finishing the process:
As a result, you design the process from beginning to end, determining the final event and a lot more:
As you’ve seen, for a proper ITIL incident management process flow, a process modeling tool can be very useful.
So, have you seen HEFLO?
A free and easy-to-use, cloud-based process modeling tool.
If you want to better understand what BPM is, Business Process Modeling, go to this link with everything you need to know: BPM Cookbook.