What are the benefits and challenges of using a dedicated major incident manager role?

1 What is a major incident manager role?

A major incident manager (MIM) is a person who is responsible for leading and facilitating the major incident process. The MIM acts as a single point of contact for all parties involved in the incident, such as service owners, technical experts, vendors, customers, and senior management. The MIM coordinates the incident response, communication, escalation, resolution, and post-incident review activities, ensuring that the incident is handled effectively and efficiently.

2 What are the benefits of using a MIM role?

A MIM role can bring several advantages to the organization, such as faster and more consistent incident resolution. The MIM can prioritize and allocate resources, monitor progress, and resolve conflicts or issues that may arise during the incident. Furthermore, this role can improve customer satisfaction and trust by providing clear and timely communication to the affected customers and stakeholders. Additionally, a MIM can enhance team collaboration and learning by fostering a culture of cooperation and accountability among the incident responders, as well as facilitate the post-incident review and improvement actions.

3 What are the challenges of using a MIM role?

Using a MIM role can also pose some challenges to the organization, such as finding and retaining qualified and experienced MIMs, who possess a combination of technical, communication, leadership, and decision-making skills. Additionally, it can be difficult to define and implement a clear and consistent major incident process. This process must be supported by a well-defined and documented framework that outlines roles, responsibilities, triggers, criteria, tools, and procedures for managing major incidents. Furthermore, the MIM role can be demanding and stressful; thus, it is important to balance the MIM workload and availability. This may require 24/7 coverage and rotation during high-impact or complex incidents.

4 How does the MIM role differ from the problem management process?

The MIM role is focused on restoring normal service as quickly as possible, while the problem management process is focused on identifying and eliminating the root causes of incidents. The MIM role and the problem management process are complementary and interrelated, but they have different objectives, scopes, and timelines. The MIM role is reactive and short-term, while the problem management process is proactive and long-term. The MIM role may initiate or participate in the problem management process, but it is not responsible for it.

5 How to implement and optimize the MIM role?

To properly implement and optimize the MIM role, the organization should assess the current state and maturity of their major incident process, identify gaps and opportunities for improvement, and define the role description, qualifications, expectations, and performance indicators. It is essential to recruit, train, and empower the MIMs and provide them with the necessary tools, resources, and support. Additionally, they should communicate the major incident process policies, guidelines, and best practices to ensure they are followed and reviewed regularly. Furthermore, they must monitor and measure the MIM role effectiveness and efficiency while collecting feedback from customers, stakeholders, and incident responders. Finally, they must continuously improve the MIM role and major incident process based on lessons learned and changing needs of the organization.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?