Definition
Some days it is difficult to remember that problems are a mountain of treasures.
A problem in IT terms is a matter or situation regarded as unwelcome or harmful and needing to be dealt with and overcome.
In IT problems are to do with the unknown cause of one or more incidents, and problem management is a process of using problem solving tools and techniques to determine the underlying cause and either come up with a solution or a work around.
Problem Management is more than just rounding up a number of problems and firing them off to the technical folk to resolve, it should at least sometimes involve a Problem Manager calling on staff from a number of areas to look at the underlying causes using specific problem solving tools. The Problem Managers toolkit include an understanding of problem solving tools and which ones to use to get to the underlying causes. The technical people may be able to resolve the technical issues given enough time, the use of problem solving tools should help identify the problems faster, and also focus participants on the particular problem.
This can be a bit tricky, people don't always want to be dragged off to discussions on problems, especially if they are help
In IT, a problem is the cause of one or more incidents. At the time the problem record is created, the cause of the problem is not generally known, and the problem process is responsible for further investigation, determining either a solution of work around to prevent further incidents. Easy really.
Terminology
The Business perception
Being the problem manager in a large organisation can present it’s err . . . own problems.
IT may be seen as a magic science from the outside, and from the outside there often appear the presumption that if you understand technology then you understand everything about it. This of course leads to the “can you come and fix my PC” mentality that assumes that if you are in IT you can fix everything in under five minutes. All too often the hapless IT guys goes along and if the reboot doesn’t work straight away, they settle in for a problem solving session and somewhere between five minutes and five hour later emerge with a solution of at least an understanding of what is broken. The customer affirms their belief that IT guys know everything about computers, who will then certainly call again next time the machine breaks down. In some cases the IT guys only had the advantage over the user of experience of opening a box before, and knowing how to Google the answer the solution.
So with that mindset in place the non-IT person takes off to work believing all IT people can solve all IT problems and it shouldn’t take too long to do it. So your typical SLA desired by a business is we want 99.9% availability and no problems thanks. The poor IT Manager feels lucky if they escape this with a 99.8% availability and an commitment that there will never be any problems, we’re being proactive here after all. So it seems we start from a place where problems shouldn’t exist and should be solved by yesterday.
The IT perception
The Process
The reality of IT in a large organisation is that it is a number of specialist roles, an a specialist in one area may know nothing much about another area. Systems aren’t like that home PC, they’re big, integrated and to resolve an issue you may need a number of specialist to work together to come up with the solution or work around. IT people can be technology focussed and not that good at communicating their specialist information to others, that’s if you can yank them away from the technology to in the first place. Funnily enough although they know that the business perception that everyone in IT isn’t true, all too often they think it is true of the problem manager – err go away and solve the problem by yourself. At this point we’re one step away form why do you keep asking me questions and why did you let this problem happen in the first place. The problem manager needs the IT version of a swiss army knife, a thick skin and a knowledge of everything to do with everything in this world. It’s a problem for sure.
Problems are discovered from a number of sources
Problems therefore range from events that did impact on business service through to those that are in effect theoretical. The perfect problem manager would of course prevent all problems and files reports of how using their own skill and intelligence, they had proactively prevented a raft of issues and thankfully no one suffered any incidents ever. I suspect they’d be fired for being a big noter and making it look all too easy, IT guys after all love to scramble in a crisis and show how those clever technology skills can be used to recover from any situation, stuff working all the time would mean long hour staring at monitors or worse still interacting with people.
The Process
When I think of Problem Management I think of a process that involves a toolkit problems solving tools.
A good problem manager is first a foremost a facilitator for other people resolving issues, simply put using problem solving techniques well is a speciilist area, most technical folk who are unaware of problem solving techniques will use a try this and try that approach until they stumble upon the answer. The problem solving tools aim to bring expertise in speeding up the process by using techniques that will aid getting to the answer in a structured way. A good facilitator may can do this without the group needing to understand the techniques.
These tools include
Too often people rush off to solve the problem without understanding what the problem is, this can waste a lot of time.
Other Information
I would rate the Keprner Tregoe problem solving technique as one of the best I have come across. The beauty of KT is that the techniques are useful for dealing with technical issues, management issues of basically any problem you want to resolve. I’ve been on a number of courses over the years and many you pick up a few good points here and there, others change your perception of what you thought before you went, Kepner-Tregoe is one of those courses.
