Use TPM data to inform incident, change, and problem management processes

Overview

Incident, change, and problem management processes in IT service management regularly encounter technology-related questions that the Technologies Inventory family is uniquely positioned to answer. When a major incident occurs involving a specific technology component, the impact assessment requires knowing which applications and services depend on that technology, information the Technologies Inventory’s Technology Spread data already provides without a separate discovery exercise.

Best Practice

Establish data flows from the Technologies Inventory family to the incident, change, and problem management processes that make technology governance data available at the point in those processes where it is most valuable. For incident management: when a major incident is classified as technology-related, the incident management process should automatically query the Technologies Inventory for the Technology Spread data of the affected technology, providing the incident team with an immediate list of all potentially affected applications and services to guide the impact assessment. For change management: when a change request involves a technology listed in the Technologies Inventory, the change management process should surface the technology’s lifecycle status, Standards Register status, and adoption concentration to the change advisory board as part of the change risk assessment context. For problem management: when a problem investigation identifies a technology platform as the root cause of recurring incidents, the problem record should be connected to the relevant Technologies Inventory record and the problem findings should trigger a review of the technology’s Rationalization Posture and Strategic Disposition to assess whether the platform deficiency warrants a disposition change.

Benefit(s)

Integrating TPM data into incident, change, and problem management processes produces faster, more accurate, and more strategically informed service management decisions. Incident impact assessment is faster because technology dependency data is available immediately rather than requiring manual investigation of system relationships. Change risk assessment is more accurate because it accounts for the adoption concentration and lifecycle status of the technologies involved rather than evaluating the change in isolation. And problem resolution is more strategically informed because platform deficiencies identified through recurring incident patterns are connected to the technology governance framework that has the authority and the organizational mandate to act on them at the portfolio level rather than only within the scope of the individual application where the problem was first observed.