According to the ITIL framework, a ticketing system like Allegra must cover the following areas:
- Incident management
- Problem management
- Change management
Some people also associate ticketing systems with asset management, especially in IT infrastructure support — but we will not go into that here. Let’s take a brief look at each of the areas above.
Incident Management
According to the ITIL definition, an incident is an unplanned disruption or degradation of a service, caused by a “problem”. For an event to qualify as an incident, the service outage must affect operations. Consequently, outages that occur outside of operating hours or during scheduled maintenance would not count as incidents. Incidents are commonly recorded and managed in a “ticketing system” or “trouble ticket system”.
An incident must typically be addressed immediately. The underlying problem must be resolved promptly — for example, through a permanent or temporary fix, or through a workaround.
Problem Management
According to the ITIL definition, a problem is the root cause of one or more incidents. However, not every problem leads to an incident. A server crash after the end of the business day is a problem, but it only becomes an incident if it has not been resolved by the next morning when people return to the office. An incident can make a problem visible.
The following options are available for dealing with a problem:
- You do nothing — for example, if the cost of fixing a problem outweighs the benefits, or if the problem does not affect your organization.
- You create a workaround when the cost of finding the root cause exceeds the disadvantages of living with the workaround.
- You find the root cause of the problem and fix it.
Change Management
Change management, according to ITIL, falls under the “Service Transition” domain. Service transition refers to activities such as deploying newly developed or modified software from the development phase into the production environment. Changes of this kind are typically planned and approved, whereas incidents occur unexpectedly.
Further Information
This blog contains articles on issue tracking in product lines and an overview of ticketing systems.
CEO Alltena GmbH
Christoph Friedrich is a computer scientist and certified Project Management Professional. He has extensive experience in the introduction and integration of project management tools as well as the analysis and definition of processes in project and service management.
