Organisations have a choice; they can prepare for, or suffer from an inevitable technical incident. Major Incident Management (MIM) procedures are crucial for quickly and effectively fixing disruptions and are a fundamental part of any management approach, be it ITIL or another ops discipline. By implementing MIM, organisations can mitigate technical risks and maintain operational stability to quickly restore services while minimising impact.
Major Incident Management is more than fixing major issues as they arise. It requires a thought-out, well-structured approach agreed upon in advance. It must cover the whole incident lifecycle, from discovery to resolution. The focus should be on quick decisions, clear communication, and coordinated responses. A major incident often requires rapid use of specific, pre-established procedures across many teams. Service continuity management is a vital prerequisite for handling large-scale problems; creating robust plans for recovery and continuity before incidents occur.
What makes an incident a "Major"
Separating the day-to-day roadblocks from the serious emergencies is part and parcel of the preparation work required for ensuring service continuity. Performing business impact analysis helps organisations understand which services are critical and what their potential downtime could mean. From there we can then prioritise responses and allocate resources during incidents, based on the severity of the incident against an established criteria. This could be anything from utilising the ITIL impact-urgency priority system, requiring external escalations through support vendors, or actioning out-of-hours/on-call resources.
Who Manages MIM?
The Major Incident Manager is the key to successful solution delivery. This individual coordinates response teams and other stakeholders, clarifies responsibilities, and oversees resolution progress. Whilst not necessarily being the technical lead on a major incident, a MIM Manager will ensure smooth communication among response teams, external parties and management by acting as a single point of contact for the incident. This can be via instant messaging, email or bridge calls as determined by the severity of the incident and any SLA agreements that determine comms requirements. The goal is to maintain or quickly restore critical services, even if that means temporarily shifting operations to backup systems or locations.
Many incidents don't spend their entire time as Critical or Priority 1, with workarounds enabling them to be downgraded and scaled back as the incident impact is negated by the coordinated MIM response. However, work continues even after an incident is successfully resolved, with post-incident review and analysis of root causes to help prevent repeat occurrences.
The Lifecycle of a Major Incident
Major Incidents are usually first reported when they are discovered, however, it is important to note the issue may have been present for some time before detection. For example, a server goes down overnight and is not detected until morning, or the issue itself may prevent reporting.
MIM procedures should begin as soon as it is determined to meet the criteria, with appropriate escalation, communication and delegation of tasks from the Major Incident Manager.
Following the resolution of the incident itself, it is important to conduct a retrospective review. The goal of this is not to assign blame but to determine improvements to systems and processes moving forward.
Taking the lessons learned from post-incident review and applying them to strengthen the environment after each incident will provide enhancements to the response to future Major Incidents and help prevent them from happening again.
It’s not a matter of if a major incident will occur, but when. The ITIL framework provides tools and processes to handle these disruptions, but the real success of Major Incident Management lies in preparation, clear communication, and the ability to learn from each incident. By integrating service continuity planning into incident management processes, you ensure that when a major incident strikes, your team is ready to respond quickly and effectively, minimising impact and keeping your business running smoothly. Remember, every incident is an opportunity to learn from and improve your business processes.
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