Priority is a classic example of a proxy variable that leads to distortion of service management practices. What do I mean by “proxy variable”, why do I say that this hallowed service management concept leads to distortion and what might we do to remedy this issue?
impact
Objective Urgency
Little urgency; less impact It is a paradox that most organizations understand incident impact fairly well, but find it difficult to measure, whereas their understanding of urgency leaves something to be desired, but it is not so difficult to measure at all. Some of the confusion is due to the so-called “best practice” of calculating […]
On the impacts and risks of changes
This text has grown out of an answer I provided in an on-line discussion group, posted on 16 November 2012. The issue I would like to address is the evident confusion in many minds between risk and impact. Often, you ask people for a list of risks and they provide, instead, a list of impacts, […]
Patterns of incident handling
Incident management is halfway between BPM and ACM I have discussed elsewhere in these columns the relationship between process-oriented work and adaptive case management. This framework will help us to refine the understanding of how incidents may best be handled. Incident handling is a good example of work that has features of process-oriented work, such […]
What is meant by severity?
Standard Terminology Most service management practitioners will agree that there is an advantage to using a shared and a standard terminology when speaking of how to manage services. To this end, the definitions provided by ITIL® are most often cited. Some terms, however, continue to be used in diverse ways, only adding to the confusion […]