As part of our ongoing efforts to improve Division of IT services, the Service Delivery and Support team has established a formal Incident Management process, which includes workflows, key performance indicators (KPIs), procedures, and the Incident Manager role.  While you may be already familiar with the existing way in which our organization handles incidents, starting on November 27^th, 2017, the updated process will be effective.  Incident Management Process training is available and can be accessed below.  The following bullet points outline the enhancements:

• We have established the role of Incident Manager.  Charlotte Ballou will serve as the Incident Manager.  Please welcome her into this role and ensure we work cooperatively with her as we strive to improve the incident process.
• ServiceNow will no longer automatically populate the Impact and Urgency of an incident. This means that the Service Desk will need to review information from tickets and determine the incident's impact on users and its criticality in order to calculate the Priority. Additionally, with the exception of select technicians, it will no longer be possible to manually adjust the priority of a ticket.  Updates to the priority of a ticket should be coordinated with the Incident Manager if needed.
• If the Service Desk sends an incident (that is actually a request) to the next tier, technicians are instructed to return these tickets to the Service Desk by entering a Work Note and changing the Assignment Group to the Service Desk in the incident form. The Service Desk will open a Request, then close the incident with the customer notes referencing the new Request number.  
• Please access the Self-Service Portal select “Report an Issue” to submit an incident, whether for yourself or on behalf of someone else. Requests for items or services can also be submitted through the Self-Service Portal under “Order Something”. Using the portal will help the organization in collecting accurate incident metrics and improve our reporting capabilities.  With the exception of the Service Desk, Incident Manager, and select users, it is no longer possible to create an incident in the back-end technician view of ServiceNow.

The Incident Manager will oversee all incidents from beginning to end, and will assure that the Division of IT consistently adheres to established quality standards. These include properly classifying incidents to ensure accurate metrics and monitoring, ensuring the Critical Incident process is followed, and verifying Service Owners submit an Emergency ITC for Priority 1 and 2 Incidents. We would also like to take a moment to re-emphasize the importance of existing Incident processes. We must continue to meet our defined Operational Level Agreement targets (as defined in the Incident Process document attached), acknowledge all incidents by entering a customer note, and assessing an incident’s impact and urgency to determine its priority.

Training for our Incident Management process will be available from November 28^th, 2017 through December 6^th.

• DoIT Technicians and IBM Partners
• Service Desk Agents
• After Hours Operators

The system updates to support the Incident Management Process were approved in Change Management and will be effective November 27^th.  If you would like more information or have any questions about this update, please let us know!

 

Change Management 

As we plan to transition Change Management into one tool in the future, we are making a couple modifications to the existing process (attached).  This will allow us to better align with our future solution.  A summary of these modifications are below:

• The change submission deadline has been adjusted. It is now the close of business on the Friday before the Wednesday Change Management meeting.
• Only approved changes can be submitted to ITC. If user signoff is received too late to follow the Normal/Planned process, the Expedited process should be followed.
• The following documents will now be required:
• Test plans - attached to the ServiceNow ticket
• User Signoff - attached to the ServiceNow ticket or email copied to ServiceNow ticket
• Backout Plan - attached to ServiceNow ticket if a document or entered in ITC in the Internal section
• Support Plan (if needed) - entered in ITC in the “Issues and Comments” section
• Instructions for the ServiceDesk/CTZ about the change for the customer and Knowledge Articles
• Training to the ServiceDesk/CTZ, if needed
• Ticket routing instructions for incidents on the change

Thank you,

Service Delivery and Support