Should the incident be closed as soon as the RFC is logged
By ITIL® from Experience©
Closing the Incident as soon as the Request For Change (RFC) is logged without restoring service to the User is not advisable and prematurely ends the Incident Management(ITIL Service Operation) The process responsible for managing the lifecycle of all incidents. Incident management ensures that normal service operation is restored as quickly as possible and the business impact is minimized.
Source: ITIL® glossary and abbreviations, English www.itil-officialsite.com/InternationalActivities/TranslatedGlossaries.aspx, 2011
It also compromises other processes that rely on a completed Incident Management process notably Service Level Management and Problem Management (one needs accurate service metrics and the other needs the input of incident resolutions for knowledge retention).
Yes, closing the incident once the RFC is logged removes the Incident from the “books” sort of speak. It helps reduce the number of outstanding issues that needs to be dealt with and as a result makes statistics look good. Not only is this approach not Client focused and it also distorts availability stats and the true performance of the IT organization.
Keeping incidents open until the service is restored may actually highlight performance and efficiency issues with the Change Management and the Release Management processes as well as overall efficiency issues in the IT organization. Bringing such problems to light should cause management to review the underlying issues instead of having operational staff prematurely close the incident.
"On average, fewer than 30% of trouble tickets are automatically generated from alerts in most IT organizations." Transforming IT Operations: From Utility Monitoring to Optimizing Business Service Delivery and Reliability March 2014
Related:
- Should incidents be closed or kept open for monitoring
- Who should log the RFC
- Does an emergency change need an incident
- Should the incident be reopened or a new one logged
- Who closes the Major Incident
- Do we need an RFC to resolve a break-fix incident
From Around the Web:
Category:
ITIL Process > Incident Management
ITIL Process > Change Management
Copyright 2012, 2020 - ITIL® from Experience - Denis Matte