Background:

A local health care system averaging 12-15 system outages per month requested assistance in evaluating the problem management process. Although the scope of the project was problem management, the client recognized the need to look at other IT processes that are inputs and outputs to problem management (e.g. incident management, change management, root cause analysis, service levels, and culture).

Goals:

• Reduce the number of systems outages
• Create a more effective Problem Management Process -Look at how the Problem Management process works today and compares to best practices -Examine the impact of Incident Management on Problem Management -Evaluate existing metrics & reporting capabilities -Analyze the capacity & structure of the organization
• Identify recommendations to address people, process or technology changes to the Problem Management process

Accomplishments / Benefits:

• Created list of eleven high priority items (RACI, Problem Management training, root cause analysis, on-call process, problem correlation, service maps, testing prior to release, testing environments, skip level meetings, knowledge articles, publishing changes and change calendar)
• Created 75 short-term and long-term people, process, and technology recommendations
• Created 6 roadmaps to address people, process, and technology recommendations
• Created SWOT analysis to summarize results