Why Not Take on Problem Management (as defined by ITIL) During The Economic Slowdown?

During period of rapid business growth, systems and processes quality may have been overlooked by many IT organisations as they would be focused on implementing new systems and rolling out new IT services as quickly as possible to keep up with the business expansion.

With the current economic slowdown, many new projects and systems may be put on hold as company will be looking into measures to reduce cost and improve efficiency. These may mean that some staff may have less work assigned or made temporarily or permanently redundant. Instead of considering staff reduction, why not get these staff to work on Problem Management (as defined by ITIL) during the economic slowdown? Why not get them to work on systems and processes quality improvement that had been overlooked and long overdue?

ITIL defines an "Incident" as any unplanned interruption to an IT service or reduction in the quality of an IT service and ITIL defines a "Problem" as the cause of one or more of those incidents. The primary objectives of taking on Problem Management are to prevent problems and resulting incidents from happening, to eliminate recurring incidents and to minimize the impact of incidents that cannot be prevented.

Working on Problem Management means the staff will perform activities required to determine the root cause of incidents and to determine the resolution to those problems. They will also ensure that the resolution is implemented so that the cause of such incidents is resolved. Service availability is therefore increased through lesser service downtime. Reduction in effort in fire-fighting or resolving repeat incidents will increase efficiency and reduce cost. Any activities that results in improved service quality, reduce cost and improve customer satisfaction would be a good thing.

Problem Management will also maintain information about problems and the appropriate workarounds and resolutions. Over time, this enables the organization to reduce the number and impact of incidents by speeding up the resolution time and identifying permanent solutions. Doing these now will position the organisation well for growth during the recovery phase. This results in less downtime and less disruption to business critical systems now and in the future. A highly reliable and quality service could turn out to be a competitive advantage in times of growth.

Employee morale boost would be another benefit as the staff will be working on meaningful activities that will make their jobs easier in the longer run.