ITIL – A Guide to Problem Management (Section 1)

What is problem management?

The goal of problem management is to minimize both the number and severity of incidents and potential problems to the business/organisation.

Problem management should aim to reduce the adverse impact of incidents and problems that are caused by errors within the IT infrastructure, and to prevent recurrence of incidents related to these errors.

Problems should be addressed in priority order with higher priority given to the resolution of problems that can cause serious disruption to critical IT services.

Problem management’s responsibility is to ensure that incident information is documented in such a way that it is readily available to support all problem management activities.

Problem management has reactive and proactive aspects:

•  Reactive – problem solving when one or more incidents occur

•  Proactive – identifying and solving problems and known errors before incidents occur in the first place