Incident Management

Incident management is the process of identifying, logging, classifying, investigating, and resolving incidents or issues that can cause service disruptions in an IT environment. The goal of incident management is to restore normal service operation as quickly as possible and minimize the adverse impact on business operations.

Incident management typically involves dedicated staff and procedures to track issues from initial detection to resolution. When an incident such as an application outage or service degradation is detected, it is logged into an incident management system and assigned a priority level based on its urgency and impact on operations. Incident managers investigate the issue to determine its root cause, often working with other IT teams like networking, security, or engineering. They may implement temporary workarounds to restore service until a full resolution can be implemented. Teams follow defined escalation policies to get the right personnel involved. Once the incident is resolved, the issue record is updated with details to aid in future diagnosis and prevention. Effective incident management relies on the coordination of multiple IT teams, detailed documentation, and continuous process review and improvement.