Top 10 incident management best practices for efficient issue resolution

With modern businesses often relying on complex and disparate IT systems to deliver their products and services, it’s unfortunately not a question of if they’ll experience technical disruptions, but rather when? Thus, it’s paramount that they have structured incident management protocols in place to help guide the actions taken in these situations and restore normal operations as quickly as possible.

When incidents occur, time is always of the essence as every additional second can lead to increased reputational and financial damage. Keeping this in mind, it’s essential not only to establish incident response procedures, but ensure they’re clearly communicated to and readily available for the boots-on-the-ground employees who’ll be tasked with handling these disruptions.

Today, we’ll take an in-depth look at what incident management involves, common challenges that companies may face, and some best practices you can leverage to optimize your approach.

What is incident management?

Incident management is a systematic approach used by organizations to identify, analyze, and respond to IT-related events that could disrupt normal operations. These incidents can range from service outages or hardware failures to larger-scale crises that affect entire business functions. The primary goal of incident management is to restore normal service operation as quickly as possible, minimizing the impact on business operations and ensuring that service availability is maintained.

Approaches to incident management can differ depending on which IT service management (ITSM) framework your organization utilizes. For example, IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) best practices emphasize a structured, process-driven approach with a clear focus on prioritizing and resolving incidents according to predefined procedures. In contrast, frameworks like Control Objectives for Information and Related Technologies (COBIT) might focus more on governance, ensuring that practices align with broader organizational goals and compliance requirements.

Incident management vs problem management

Incident management and problem management are both integral components of ITSM frameworks, but serve different purposes and have distinct objectives.

Incident management is more immediate in its focus, as it emphasizes the restoration of services after an incident, aiming to minimize the potential impact as quickly as possible. When a disruption occurs, incident management teams work to resolve the issue, restore normal operations, and ensure that users can continue their work with minimal downtime. The main priorities in incident management are speed and efficiency, with the goal of resolving the issue rather than investigating its underlying cause.

Conversely, problem management is concerned with identifying the root causes of incidents to prevent future occurrences. While incident management deals with the symptoms of an issue, problem management seeks to understand why the issue happened in the first place. Once the cause is identified, problem management focuses on implementing long-term solutions, such as changes to processes, systems, or configurations, to prevent the problem from recurring.

10 incident management best practices

Effective incident management is essential for maintaining the stability and reliability of an organization's IT infrastructure. Implementing a proven set of best practices can not only help in swiftly resolving these issues, but also in minimizing their long-term effects. 

Some common strategies found in successful incident management blueprints include:

1. Maintain constant communication with stakeholders

From the moment an incident is detected, it’s essential to establish clear lines of communication with all relevant stakeholders, including customers, internal teams, and leadership. Regular updates should be provided on the status of the disruption, the steps being taken to resolve it, and any potential impact on business operations. Make sure that this communication is tailored to the audience receiving it, with technical details shared with IT teams and more high-level information provided to executives and customers.

In addition to regular updates, organizations must be responsive to stakeholders’ concerns and questions during an incident. This involves setting up dedicated communication channels, such as a hotline, email updates, or a status page, where individuals can easily access information and ask for clarification if needed.

2. Resolve incidents at the lowest possible level

Businesses should aim to handle disruptions at the lowest possible level, i.e. at the first line of support rather than after escalating to higher-level technicians, as it helps to resolve incidents as quickly as possible while also preserving valuable resources. To achieve this, all support agents need to be well-trained and equipped with the necessary tools and authority to diagnose and resolve common issues. This might include having access to a comprehensive knowledge base, scripts for common troubleshooting steps, and the ability to perform basic fixes.

Additionally, establishing clear escalation protocols is paramount in ensuring that more complicated incidents are transferred to higher levels of support only when necessary. This necessitates defining which types of disruptions should be handled at each support level and verifying that frontline teams have the ability to recognize when an issue exceeds their capabilities. 

When incidents are resolved at the lowest level, it not only improves operational efficiency, but also enhances the overall user experience (UX) by providing faster resolutions. 

3. Develop and use a comprehensive knowledge base

In order to build a robust knowledge base, companies should gather detailed documentation on common issues, troubleshooting steps, and resolution procedures. This documentation is often created collaboratively, with input from various teams, including IT, customer support, and subject matter experts. You’ll need to ensure your base is organized in a user-friendly manner, with clear categorization and search functionality to help support staff find relevant information quickly, as time is of the essence when disruptions occur.

Once developed, the knowledge base should be integrated into the daily operations of incident management processes. Make sure your support team knows that the base is to be used as their first resource when addressing incidents, using it to guide their troubleshooting and resolution efforts. It’s also important to encourage continuous feedback from support staff, as this can help identify gaps or outdated information, which can then be addressed to improve its effectiveness.

4. Ensure seamless tool integration within your NOC

A Network Operations Center (NOC) is a centralized hub where IT professionals monitor, manage, and maintain an organization's technical infrastructure. Ensuring that all your incident management tools are seamlessly integrated with this platform allows for the smooth flow of information, quicker response times, and better coordination among teams. 

The goal here is to create a unified ecosystem where these systems can share data and communicate effectively with each other. This might involve using APIs, middleware, or integrated platforms that allow different tools to work together without manual intervention. 

Once all pertinent tools are connected, it’s important to establish standardized workflows that leverage this integration. For example, monitoring systems should automatically trigger alerts in the incident management platform when anomalies are detected, which then generates tickets in the ticketing system for immediate action by the support team. Providing sufficient training for NOC staff on how to effectively use these different resources can further enhance efficiency, helping verify that all disruptions are managed as swiftly and accurately as possible.

5. Set and track operational service level metrics

To begin, organizations should define key service level agreements (SLAs) that outline the expected response times for different types of incidents. These SLAs are typically based on the criticality of services, with higher priority given to disruptions that have a significant impact on business operations. Once SLAs are established, specific operational metrics—such as mean time to respond (MTTR), mean time to resolve (MTTR), and first contact resolution rate (FCR)—should be tracked to measure performance against these targets. 

To effectively track these key performance indicators (KPIs), companies can use automated incident management tools that report on SLA adherence in real-time. For instance, dashboards might be used to help visualize performance, highlighting areas where SLAs are being met or missed. Regular reviews of these metrics should also be instituted to identify trends, such as recurring issues or delays in the incident resolution process, allowing teams to take corrective action.

6. Keep a jump bag with essential resources

A ‘jump bag’ is a pre-packed kit containing all the physical tools and documents necessary to handle incidents, especially in situations where immediate action is required. This bag should include essential items such as laptops pre-configured with necessary software, mobile hotspots for connectivity, communication devices, and any other relevant tools or hardware. It typically contains printed copies of critical documentation as well, including incident response plans, contact lists, and access credentials.

Regularly maintaining and updating the jump bag is crucial to its effectiveness. Its contents should be reviewed periodically to verify that software and documentation are always up-to-date and that all equipment is in working order. This includes testing devices like laptops and hotspots to ensure they’re fully functional and replacing any items that have been used or are outdated.

7. Utilize runbooks for consistent response

Runbooks are detailed, step-by-step guides that outline the actions to take when responding to specific types of incidents. These documents serve as a playbook for incident response teams, providing clear instructions on how to diagnose issues, execute recovery tasks, and escalate the situation if needed. By following a runbook, even less-experienced team members can handle incidents effectively, as they have structured procedures to follow. 

To maximize their effectiveness, runbooks must be regularly fine-tuned based on past incident experiences and evolving technologies. Their creation should involve collaboration between different teams, including IT, security, and operations, to ensure that all aspects of incident management are covered. Runbooks should be easily accessible to all relevant personnel as well, whether stored digitally in a centralized knowledge base or physically in a readily available location.

8. Apply chaos engineering for system resilience

The goal of chaos engineering is to proactively identify weaknesses and improve system reliability by simulating real-world conditions that could potentially cause performance issues. By creating controlled experiments where components of the system are deliberately compromised, teams can observe how the system responds and verify that it can handle unexpected disruptions gracefully.

Implementing chaos engineering requires a systematic approach, including defining hypotheses about system behavior, setting up controlled experiments, and analyzing the outcomes. When carrying out these simulations, it’s crucial to ensure careful execution in order to minimize the impact on live systems and verify that they don’t lead to unintended consequences. Results from chaos experiments should then be used to refine system design, improve fault tolerance, and update incident response plans.

9. Centralize alert management

Unifying alert management efforts involves consolidating all incident notifications into a single, centralized platform to streamline response efforts. This approach allows teams to monitor and prioritize alerts from various sources—such as monitoring tools, application performance systems, and network devices—through one central interface.

To effectively consolidate these alerts, organizations will need to connect their monitoring tools and alerting systems with a central incident management platform. This integration involves configuring systems to forward alerts to the unified platform, where they can then be categorized, prioritized, and assigned to the appropriate team members. Automated workflows and escalation procedures can further help ensure that all alerts are handled efficiently. 

10. Communicate openly about incidents

When a disruption occurs, it’s important to provide timely and accurate information to all relevant parties, including customers, internal teams, and leadership. This requires issuing regular status updates that cover the nature of the incident, its impact on services, the steps being taken to resolve it, and any estimated timelines for resolution.

In addition to regular updates, it’s vital that businesses conduct comprehensive post-incident reviews once issues have been resolved. This assessment should detail what happened, how the incident was managed, and what measures will be implemented to prevent similar issues in the future. Sharing lessons learned and improvements made helps to reinforce an organization’s commitment to continuous improvement and accountability. 

Common challenges in incident management

While incident management is essential for any company that relies on information technology to deliver its services, it’s also often fraught with a range of challenges that can impact its effectiveness. Understanding these potential difficulties is critical for developing a strategy that can help mitigate them or avoid them altogether.

Let’s take a look at some of the most common challenges that organizations may face in incident management:

Scalability and cost

As businesses expand or face varying volumes of disruptions, their incident management systems must scale alongside them. This can sometimes be challenging as it often requires investing in additional tools, infrastructure, and personnel, which can drive up costs. Without sufficient scalability, organizations risk slower response times and increased downtime, hampering the incident management process as a whole.

To help overcome these challenges, businesses must implement scalable incident management solutions that can grow with their needs. For example, cloud-based tools often offer desirable flexibility and can be scaled up or down based on demand, helping to manage expenses more effectively. Moreover, adopting automated processes and artificial intelligence (AI) can enhance efficiency by handling routine tasks and providing real-time insights, reducing the need for extensive manual intervention and associated costs. 

Staffing

Incident management requires a team of professionals with diverse expertise, including technical knowledge, problem-solving skills, and effective communication abilities. Recruiting and retaining such talent can be difficult, especially in competitive job markets or during periods of high demand. Even more, the 24/7 nature of these efforts means that staffing must cover all shifts, which can further complicate scheduling and increase expenses.

Organizations can adopt several strategies to help alleviate these concerns. For one, investing in comprehensive training programs can serve to upskill existing staff and prepare them for various scenarios, reducing reliance on external hiring. Other businesses may choose to implement cross-training, allowing team members to handle multiple roles, thus increasing flexibility and coverage. Some companies may even choose to look outside of their internal infrastructure for assistance; studies show that 37% of companies leverage a managed service provider (MSP) to handle their incident management efforts.

Communication and collaboration across teams

During an incident, different teams—such as IT support, network operations, and security—must work together seamlessly to address the issue, which can be hindered by miscommunication or lack of shared information. These difficulties are often compounded by the need for real-time decisions, which can strain communication channels even more and lead to additional delays or misunderstandings.

To help optimize these efforts, businesses should designate integrated communication platforms that facilitate real-time coordination among teams. Using a centralized incident management system can help by consolidating all incident-related information in one place, verifying that everyone involved has access to the latest updates and status reports. Establishing clear communication protocols and designated roles within the incident response plan can streamline interactions and reduce the risk of miscommunication as well.

Incident management tools and software

Lucky for you, in today’s digital age, there’s no shortage of tools and software at your disposal to assist you with your incident management initiatives. From monitoring systems and proactive alerts to automated workflows and SLA management tools, modern technologies serve to empower businesses to get out in front of potential incidents and resolve them quickly when they do occur.

Freshservice acts as one of the market’s most robust ITSM solutions, offering an abundance of useful features that can help ensure you have every aspect of your incident management procedures covered.

SLA management: Set multiple service level policies for different business hours or incident categories, while easily resolving tickets based on priorities.

Multi-channel support: Enable end-users to reach support via email, self-service portal, mobile app, phone, chatbot, feedback widgets, or walk-ups.

Categorization and prioritization: Automatically categorize tickets based on historical ticket data with Freddy AI and prioritize them with powerful workflow automation based on impact and urgency.

Auto-routing: Auto-route tickets to the most appropriate agent and ensure no ticket falls through the cracks with either round-robin or load balancing assignments.

Service health monitoring: Provides a user-centric view into the state of digital operations, while helping to visually discern interdependencies between assets and services.

Optimize your IT operations today with Freshservice!

Looking to enhance your incident management practices to ensure that you’re ready when the time comes? Freshservice is here for you!

Freshservice is simply unmatched when it comes to providing a comprehensive ITSM solution that offers an abundance of incident management capabilities. To help expedite incident resolution, the platform offers automated categorization, prioritization, and routing, assisting in verifying that incident reports are delivered to a relevant agent as quickly as possible and with as much information as possible. Furthermore, its problem management capacity empowers IT teams to address the root causes of issues to ensure they don’t recur in the future.

Proactive monitoring and alerts? Freshservice has you covered. Our alert management tools consolidate notifications from all monitoring tools on a single pane of glass, while Freddy AI digs through the noise to highlight critical operational issues. Other standout features like SLA management, service health monitoring, and workflow automation further contribute to well-rounded incident management procedures to help ensure you have all your bases covered when the time comes.

Ready to experience the Freshservice advantage for yourself? Sign up for a free trial or request a demo today!