Best practices for implementing the Problem Management application

[Dawn Jurek]

Many IT organizations are stuck fighting fires trying to keep the business running, leaving little time to research why those fires happen and find solutions to prevent them. Environments like this cause staff burnout and hinder the ability of IT to be a better business partner. This restricts business growth and prosperity.

—ServiceNow Problem Management Data Sheet

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A problem is the underlying cause of one or more incidents, and problem management is the process responsible for managing the lifecycle of all problems and finding the root cause. The goal is to minimize the adverse effect on the business caused by problems and to proactively prevent the occurrence of incidents, problems, and errors.

In this installment of our NOWSupport best practices series, you can learn more about problem management, including best practices for implementing an industry standard approach to problem management in your organization.

First, check out this Problem Management Overview video on our NOWSupport YouTube channel:

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Now, here are some best practices for implementing the Problem Management application in your organization:

Define a timeline

Inside of the problem management process, create a timeline for root cause analysis. For example, you might have a 30/60/90-day escalation process to critical decision-making based on your findings. Take a look at your progress and decide if you've gained enough traction to continue analysis and research, or if it's time to document this as a known error without a permanent fix.

Utilize structured problem analysis

A key component of problem management is the identification of the root cause of a problem and the decisions that will be made on how to resolve it. A problem-solving process can be used to help diagnose and resolve problems, and should be used as appropriate. In addition, the ServiceNow Structured Problem Analysis plugin enables problem analysis activities to be captured and tracked using a technique based on Kepner Tregoe methodology. To activate the plugin, you must request it and provide verification that you completed a Kepner Tregoe training course.

Communicate a workaround

One task that is often overlooked is entering a workaround into the problem record. Workarounds for incidents caused by the problem should be documented in the problem and incidents. Once the root cause of the problem has been determined, a known error is recorded and communicated to the Service Desk to ensure that if further incidents or problems occur, they can be identified and service restored more quickly.

The workaround should be documented within the problem record and can be communicated by the following methods:

• Knowledge Check Box: Automatically submit relevant information to the knowledge management process by selecting this check box on the problem form when closing the problem. By default, the knowledge article is created in a Draft state, ready for a knowledge team member to review and publish it.

• Communicate Workaround related link: To update all incidents associated with a problem, click the Communicate Workaround link on the problem record form. This will add the problem record number and the content of the Workaround field as a new entry in the Additional comments field on all related incidents. By default, the entries made in the Additional comments field generate an email notification to the Caller on the incident form. The Communicate Workaround option on the problem form quickly and easily communicates workarounds to multiple users from one place, eliminating the need to manually update each incident.

• Post Knowledge related link: Create a new knowledge article from a problem immediately, rather than when the problem closes. The problem Number and Short Description fields become the knowledge article Short Description, and the article is set to the Draft state.

• Post News related link: Create a knowledge article in the Published state. The problem Number and Short Description fields become the knowledge article Short Description. These articles appear in the News category of the knowledge portal immediately.

Manage Known Errors

A Known Error should be raised when it becomes useful to do so. The identification and documentation of Known Errors allows service desk agents to quickly diagnose incoming incidents and apply any workarounds where available. Known Errors should also be published as knowledge articles which can be accessed via self-service, as well as by the service desk. These Known Errors should be reviewed and tracked to ensure the information is relevant, and should remain open if the problem cannot be fixed, or a decision has been made to not make a fix available.

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For more information, see:

• Problem Management (product documentation)
• Problem Management Process (product documentation)
• Problem Management: How to get up and running quickly (webinar)
• Business service maps (product documentation)
• Assignment rules module (product documentation)
• ITSM Value Realization Webinars - Calendar

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Behind the scenes here at ServiceNow, the Knowledge Management and Multimedia teams work closely with subject matter experts to disseminate critical information to our customers. We've found that certain topics come up frequently, in the form of best practices that can help you keep your ServiceNow instances running smoothly. This series targets those topics so that you and your organization can benefit from our collective expertise. If you have a best practices topic you'd like us to cover in this series, please let us know in the comments below.

To access all of the blog posts in this series, see our NOWSupport best practices series list.