Practical Guide to IT Problem Management

Many IT teams spend most of their energy reacting: handling incidents as they surface and repairing, or merely patching over, the damage. In such teams, restarting a computer is often the standard fix for a wide range of problems. A good test of whether an organisation understands problem management is what it does once the machine is back up. When a reboot clears the fault, it is tempting to close the ticket and consider the job done, but problem management recognises that nothing has really improved. The team has simply been working hard to stay where it was.

This book is written to help IT organisations get past that cycle. It brings together several methods, including examining timelines and failure modes, drilling down, asking why five times, and dividing a problem into smaller parts. It also explores complexity theory and considers how automation can reduce the complexity of a problem and change who is able to resolve it. Finding the root cause, the author stresses, is not the end of the process. The available resolutions must still be evaluated and ranked against other improvements competing for attention.

The guide also looks at the role of problem boards and checklists, and at how problem management relates to Lean thinking. It works both as a framework for tackling problems and as a toolbox, so readers can choose the right method once they have identified the type of problem they face. Alongside reactive techniques, it sets out proactive activities that aim to reduce how often problems occur, or to limit their impact and complexity when they do.

Good problem solving, the book observes, combines common sense with formal methodologies, and those methodologies are either learned through painful experience or taught. The guide shows how to use problem-solving tools and how to judge when each one applies, with the aim of building the skills of IT staff and improving the processes their teams use to solve problems.