The Problem with Problem Management

Lee Healey
Oct 5, 2022
2 min read

Despite its age, maturity and clear business benefits, why is Problem Management one of the least utilised Service Management practices?

At an academic level, the benefits of Problem Management are universally understood. Fundamentally, the benefit of preventing problems and failures of products, equipment, systems and software, one could argue, should be common sense:

Increased customer satisfaction
Better customer experiences and loyalty
Reduction in costs from remedial work
Reduction in costs from returns
Reduction in costs from warranty claims
Reduction in costs from lost time
Reduction in costs from lost productivity ...and so on.

So if the benefits of cost reduction and increased customer satisfaction are clear for all to see, why is the Problem Management practice not given sufficient attention in our organisations?

Whilst most people can see the benefits and most would agree that that benefits are a good thing, is it seen as a practice that makes a significant impact on growth?

Practical? Yes. Beneficial? Undoubtedly. Creating Massive Growth ? Errr, Nope.

Unfortunately, a lot of senior leaders in organisations are not compensated or collect bonuses for reducing operational costs relating to remedial work, returns, warranty claims, lost time or lost productivity from avoidable causes. Put another way, generally speaking leaders are not incentivised to make existing things incrementally better.

That’s quite a bold claim, but think about it... in many organisations, senior leaders and staff are incentivised for growth rather than improvement. Why? Shareholders want growth, growth and more growth.

Is this a cultural problem that is endemic across the western economies? Often it seems like the concept of making things better is discarded in favour of the next big thing that gives more growth. Is this shiny ball syndrome? Maybe. Is it the nature of the western capitalist philosophies? Maybe. In eastern cultures like that in Japan, the concept of continual improvement (or Kaizen) is an art form. Many western companies have looked to adopt a Kaizen (continual improvement) philosophy. In which case, why then is problem management not seen as fundamental to good change (Kaizen)? Why is problem management not given more credence in the board room?

Let’s face it, who gets the big budgets, the leaders who create initiatives for growth in sales, or the leaders who create initiatives for continual improvements and reduction in costs?

In the smart organisations funding will be allocated to those initiatives that can show demonstrable potential value that link to the organisational strategy. Perhaps, in the case of Problem Management, it is difficult to forecast the value because it might be difficult to link a problem management initiative to a strategic endeavour.

Digging even further, is the problem (please excuse the pun) that organisational strategy is not communicated or recorded in a way that makes it easy to link or connect any new initiative of any kind, and because almost every enthusiastic sales director in any organisation can articulate sales growth targets easily then the initiatives that claim to boost sales growth are the initiatives that receive the funding... just saying, enthusiasm and empty promises can go a long way sometimes!

It certainly is a difficult situation to resolve, or is it?..

We would love to hear your opinions and success stories of Problem Management initiatives, please do comment.

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What is ITSM?

Information Technology Service Management processes include a range of activities designed to deliver and support high-quality IT services for your business. These can include incident management, problem management, change management, and service-level management. Additionally, ITSM involves continuous enhancement processes to improve service delivery, increase efficiency and reduce costs. By adopting strong ITSM practices, your business can improve service quality, customer satisfaction and achieve greater alignment between IT and business objectives. This holistic approach ensures that IT services are effective and integrated with your overall business goals. As ITSM focuses on aligning IT services with your business’s needs, you can ensure that IT processes and services support and enhance business operations. This is achieved through a structured approach to managing IT services, guided by best practices and methodologies such as ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library). These models provide guidance on best practices for delivering and supporting technology and other enterprise services and can help companies align their capabilities with their business goals and strategic objectives.
What is ITIL and how does it underpin ITSM?

We adhere to the ITIL Framework in delivering our ITSM consultancy services. ITIL is a globally recognised set of best practices for ITSM that helps businesses provide consistent, high-quality IT services. By implementing ITIL processes and principles, we ensure that your IT operations are standardised, efficient and aligned with industry standards. ITIL4 is the latest version of ITIL, designed to help enterprises navigate the new technological era known as the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This version introduces a more flexible, modern approach to ITSM, emphasising its integration with other areas of business management.
What are the core practices and processes in ITSM?

Effective ITSM revolves around a number of processes. Whilst there are 34 practice areas in ITIL4, there are often a core set of practices that many of our clients are particularly interested in optimising. As understanding and implementing these processes can significantly enhance the performance and quality of IT services within your organisation. Incident Management Restores all service operations back to normal as soon as possible, minimising to lessen the impact on your operations. This process might involve logging, categorising, prioritising, and resolving incidents, ensuring which can help mitigate disruption to users and the business. Configuration Management Keeps an updated record of IT infrastructure - hardware, software, and network components - in a centralised configuration management database (CMDB). This database provides accurate data on configuration items (CIs) and their relationships. Change Management Ensures any changes to your IT services are controlled and coordinated. This process evaluates the impact of changes, approving them through a structured workflow, and ensuring successful implementation with minimal risk. Service level Management Defines, negotiates, and monitors service level agreements (SLAs) between the service provider and the customer. This process ensures that agreed-upon service quality and performance levels are consistently met. Asset Management Tracks and manages your IT assets throughout their lifecycle to ensure efficient use and cost control. You maintain an accurate inventory of hardware, software, and other IT resources through this. Problem Management Identifies, analyses and resolves the root causes of incidents. Proactively addressing underlying issues can prevent recurring incidents. This, in turn, provides improved system stability and reduced downtime. Request Management Handles the lifecycle of user service requests, such as access to applications, software installations or information enquiries. It ensures requests are managed efficiently to provide a streamlined approach that fulfils user needs and enhances satisfaction. Knowledge Management Captures, organises and shares knowledge to improve efficiency and support decision-making. By leveraging a centralised knowledge base, your IT teams can quickly resolve incidents and problems, and end-users can find the right solutions to common issues.
Why is ITSM important to organisations and their IT (and Enterprise) teams?

Implementing the right ITSM strategy and optimising your tooling can provide a range of benefits for your company, including: Improved Efficiency and Cost Savings By streamlining processes and automating routine tasks, ITSM can help your enterprise work more efficiently and reduce the time and resources required to deliver and support IT services. Good ITSM is a silent enabler of success across a range of organisational goals. Improved Compliance and Risk Management ITSM can help you ensure that your IT systems and processes comply with industry regulations and standards. It also ensures that you are effectively managing risks associated with your IT operations. This can help you avoid costly disruptions and legal consequences. Increased Productivity Effective ITSM practices can help your business prevent problems and fix them quickly if they do occur. This can help you lower costs—outages cost money—and increase productivity and employee satisfaction. Better Customer Satisfaction You can improve customer satisfaction and build stronger relationships by delivering high-quality IT services that meet customers' needs. Improved Service Quality ITSM ensures that IT services are delivered consistently and meet agreed-upon service levels, leading to higher customer satisfaction and better overall service quality. Business Continuity ITSM processes like incident and problem management ensure that disruptions are minimised and services are quickly restored to ensure business continuity. Strategic Alignment ITSM aligns IT services with business objectives, ensuring that technology initiatives support and drive business growth. This alignment helps you make informed decisions and prioritise projects that add the most value. Enhanced Collaboration ITSM promotes a collaborative environment where IT teams can work together more effectively, sharing knowledge and best practices to improve your delivery of services. Proactive problem-solving Through problem management and a proactive approach, ITSM helps your IT teams identify and address the root causes of incidents to prevent future issues and reduce downtime. Continuous Improvement ITSM encourages continuous monitoring and improvement of IT processes, allowing your IT teams to refine and enhance their service delivery regularly. Better Resource Management With ITSM, IT teams can manage resources more effectively, ensuring that personnel, technology, and budget are allocated optimally to support business requirements.
Do you provide ITSM tooling support and what tools do you specialise in?

The ITSM People are completely agnostic with ITSM tools and not tied to any vendors. Given the close relationship between ITSM related processes and ITSM tools, we often get involved in tool selection projects, or making recommendations on how to improve tools and get the best value from them. We work with tools such as ServiceNow, BMC, Jira, ManageEngine, Fresh, Halo and Xurrent.