The manner in which software engineers resolve incidents plays a crucial role in the business performance of the service provider. Hence, to get the best results in terms of incident management, and reduce negative impacts on businesses, engineers should be provided with a decision support system that will prioritize incidents based on their business impacts. By taking into consideration the inputs provided by the decision support system, software engineers can reduce the negative impact on business to a large extent. For this reason, the decision support system is also called Incident Prioritizer(IP). It uses the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) for calculating the priorities of incidents based on criteria set by the decision support system. The criteria are decided based on the relevance in the field of IT service management. The criteria are mostly defined by the management of the IT service provider organization which also reflects the business impact caused by incidents.
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What is Decision Support System?
Before going into deeper discussions, let us try to understand what decision support is. It is a software program that analyzes business data that it is exposed to. Through its analysis, the software helps business users make decisions with ease. Decision support is an information application as opposed to an operational application. The latter collects information in course of normal business operations. On the other hand, the decision support system provides a comparative analysis of sales figures between one week and another, revenue figures based on assumptions and calculations, and the consequences likely to be faced in making certain decisions. The inputs are provided based on analysis and past experience.
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Using Decision Support System:
The use of technology has helped business users make decisions in a lot more systematic manner. The incident management process can be improved significantly with the availability of the right information. The key word here is the right information, without which the decision support system may not function successfully.
You may still come across service desks using the hero-centric model to function which is not the latest recommended model to be followed. In such cases, the attempt to implement the decision support system ends up being a failure.
In order to make sure that the decision support works, we need to adhere to a checklist. Let us take a look at it. -
Checklist – Decision Support
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Relevance:
How far the information provided, is relevant to the current scenario? Is the information worthy to be provided to the decision support system so that it can help software engineers with prioritizing incident resolutions? Is the information enough for incidents to be resolved and moved to the next level? These are a few key questions that need to be addressed so that the decision support system can be used effectively to help prioritize incident resolutions.
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Presentation:
Let us assume that the information provided is relevant. In that case, the next important question is, how are we going to present the information? Is it being presented in a manner that is appropriate for the skill level of the recipients? Is the presentation style has the right blend of visual appeal and right inputs? If not, are you making efforts to achieve the same? It should be remembered that the manner in which information is presented to clients, stakeholders, or software engineers, should be neat and appealing so it helps break the monotony of work. However, this does not mean, it is the eye-catching graphic grabbing attention that is important. The right information and inputs should be put in the right place supported by the appropriate graphical elements.
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Time Frame:
It is very important to provide the right information at the right time. You also need to ensure that the information you provide is updated and valid considering the current day scenario. You also need to ensure that they provided is neither too early nor too late. This is important so that the decision support system is able to provide correct inputs to software engineers and help them prioritize incidents in an apt manner.
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Some More Inputs on Using Decision Support for ITIL Incident Management
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The perspective of the End User:
With the advancement of technology, you have devices in place with which you can capture information about the person raising an incident. You can check the location and time which helps you form a perspective on the end user. This input is valuable and helps in gaining end user perspective and in turn, helps resolve incidents with ease.
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Knowledge Management:
For incidents to be resolved on time and with efficiency, it is important that those entrusted with this task have access to the relevant knowledge. All software engineers should be aware of how to resolve incidents of different types and new members should be trained on the same so that everyone is on the same page. New updates should be shared with the entire team so that resolution of incidents takes minimum time.
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Availability of Data:
There was a time when help desk and system monitoring solutions were integrated. This had several disadvantages as the system needed to be restarted several times. However, the intention was great as it helped understand what failed, and what is about to fail. This gives you a signal regarding what is coming your way so that you can be prepared to find workarounds for the temporary disruptions in work.
However, in the current scenario, the technology is way advanced and the helpdesk has ready-to-use analytics reports regarding all disruptions likely to occur. Hence, there is no more integration of helpdesk with systems leading to system re-starts, system getting hanged, etc. -
Collaboration:
Collaboration is of key importance for all software engineers who are resolving incidents, to be on the same page. It may so happen, that you sitting in one room and have almost no idea what your peer is working on in the other room. This situation is not desirable and does not help in incident resolutions through decision support. In order to effectively provide solutions to incidents, collaboration and knowledge-sharing should be set as a standard working practice. It not only enhances operational efficiency but also promotes cohesion and team spirit.
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As you can see, with the advancement of technology, predicting incidents and resolving them is way easier than before. When integrated with the decision support system, the incident management system becomes even more efficient as priority is set based on real-time analysis.
