Problem Management Roles

The following users typically work with Problem Management:

Problem Manager

Problem Managers are responsible for the following:

• Managing the lifecycle of all problems.
• Preventing incidents from happening.
• Minimizing the impact of unavoidable incidents.
• Making temporary solutions (workarounds) available to incident management.
• Developing final solutions for known errors.
• Performing trend analysis of important services or historical incidents.

The problem control process aims to handle problems in an efficient way. Problem control identifies the root cause of incidents and reports it to the Service Desk.

The Problem Manager role provides the capabilities necessary to perform the Problem Management tasks described in this section. While it is possible that other roles provide similar capabilities, there is no guarantee that other roles provide exactly the necessary permissions and capabilities as Problem Manager. It is strongly recommended that you log in as the Problem Manager before performing the Problem Manager tasks described here. However, in your organization, you might have permissions to work in multiple roles. Check with your administrator.

Activities of the Problem Manager include:

• Problem identification and recording. See Managing Problems.
• Problem investigation and diagnosis.
• Identifying underlying causes of incidents and preventing recurrences.
• Developing workarounds or other solutions to incidents.
• Submitting change requests to change management as required to eliminate known problems.
• Recording, managing, and advancing the problem by escalating to an elevated level of expertise, if appropriate, by integrating with change management, incident management, and configuration management.
• Creating tasks to work on the problem resolution. See Creating a Task.
• Problem resolution and closure. See Resolving a Problem and Closing a Problem.
• Analyzing historical data to identify and eliminate potential incidents before they occur.
• Identifying users to actively monitor and oversee the problem resolution process. See Working with the Problem Review Board.

Service Desk Analyst (SDA)

Service Desk Analysts can work in problem management as the support staff assigned to complete tasks or resolve problems. See Working on a Task.

Service Desk Analysts can also own incidents that are related to problems. Service Desk Analysts log potential problems while working on incidents. See Managing Problems

Problem Review Board (PRB)

Any HEAT user can be a member of the Problem Review BoardA group of people who manage problems. This is done through analyzing incidents as they happen, reviewing historic trend data, and staying current with industry news and vendor updates. The PRB must include representation from relevant individuals to effectively review incident trend data for reactive Problem Management as well as searching for risks from a proactive stance.. Problem Managers assign individuals to review problems, verify fixes, and manage the entire process if necessary. See Working with the Problem Review Board.