1. Problem Management
ISD Division
Office of State Finance

2. Contents Purpose of Problem Management Roles Process Policy 2
Office of State Finance
Purpose of Problem Management
Roles
Process
Policy 2

3. Contents
Office of State Finance
Purpose of Problem Management 3

4. Terms (Service Operations)
Office of State Finance 1
Something is broken or about to break.
Repair as quickly as possible.
Open incidents are measured against SLAs.
Incident 2
Underlying “root-cause.”
Remains open until underlying issue is resolved.
Open Problems are not measured against SLAs.
Creates “work-arounds.”
Problem 3
Routine pleas for help – but nothing is broken. These include items like “can you tell me Joe Blow’s phone number”, “can you unlock my account”, and “will you reset my password.”
Service Request
ITIL Training

5. Problem Guidelines Office of State Finance
There is no time SLA target associated with problem resolution. Resolution of the root cause of a problem may take hours or days or even years.
Problems do not need prior approvals to be worked and resolved. They only need to be prioritized to work the most critical problems first.
If it appears that root cause identification and resolution are not readily apparent and the impact is medium or high, effort should be focused first on providing a suitable documented work around.

6. Problem Prioritization
Office of State Finance
Problems use the same prioritization as incidents. To prioritize, the impact and severity must be assessed.
Problem Priority
Impact: People & Service
Severity: Time
Severity
3-Low
User cannot perform a portion of their duties.
2-Medium
User cannot perform critical time sensitive functions
1-High
Major portion of a critical service is unavailable
Impact
One or two personnel
Degraded Service Levels but still processing within SLA constraints
Multiple personnel in one physical location
Degraded Service Levels at or below SLA constraints
Cause of problem falls across multiple functional areas
All users of a specific service
Personnel from multiple agencies are affected
Public facing service is unavailable
Any item listed in the Crisis Response tables

7. Contents
Office of State Finance
Roles 7

8. Roles OSF ISD Service Desk
Office of State Finance
OSF ISD Service Desk
Ensure that all problems received by the Service Desk are recorded in CRM
Delegates responsibility by assigning problems to the appropriate provider group for resolution based upon the categorization rules
Performs post-resolution customer review to ensure that all work services are functioning properly
Quality Assurance
Owns all reported problems
Prepare reports showing statistics of problems resolved / unresolved

9. Roles Service Provider Group
Office of State Finance
Service Provider Group
Composed of technical and functional staff involved in supporting services
Perform root cause analysis of the problem and develop potential solutions
Test potential solutions and develop implementation plan
 Problem Reporter
 Anyone within OSF / ISD can request a problem case to be opened.
The typical sources for problems are the Service Desk, Service Provider Groups, and proactive problem management through Quality Assurance.

10. Contents
Office of State Finance
Process 10

11. Process Flow

12. Process Flow - Identification
Anyone within OSF / ISD can request that a problem case be opened.
All initial information relative to problem will be logged, especially related incidents.
Before continuing the Service Desk will verify the related service having the issue and correlate it with an existing service and SLA.
After problem verification, the Service Desk will attempt to establish incident severity and impact which define priority.

13. Process Flow – Analyze & Resolve
Primary root cause analysis will be performed by the Service Provider Group.
As soon as the problem is clearly documented with identifying symptoms, a known error record will created within CRM so that if additional incidents occur, they can be tied to the existing problem.
Once the solution is determined, it should be implemented following the Change Management Process.
Once the solution is implemented and verified, the problem case may be closed.

14. Contents
Office of State Finance
Policy 14

15. Problem Policy Office of State Finance
Problems must be logged with the Service Desk before they are worked.
There is no SLA target date connected to problem resolution.
If a work around for the problem has been discovered, it should be provided to the Service Desk and logged into CRM.