Investigation and Diagnosis

In the case of incidents where the user is just seeking information, the Service Desk should be able to provide this fairly quickly and resolve the service request – but if a fault is being reported, this is an incident and likely to require some degree of investigation and diagnosis.

Each of the support groups involved with the incident handling will investigate and diagnose what has gone wrong – and all such activities (including details of any actions taken to try to resolve or re-create the incident) should be fully documented in the incident record so that a complete historical record of all activities is maintained at all times.

Note: Valuable time can often be lost if investigation and diagnostic action (or indeed resolution or recovery actions) are performed serially. Where possible, such activities should be performed in parallel to reduce overall timescales – and support tools should be designed and/or selected to allow this. However, care should be taken to coordinate activities, particularly resolution or recovery activities, otherwise the actions of different groups may conflict or further complicate a resolution!

This investigation is likely to include such actions as:

• Establishing exactly what has gone wrong or being sought by the user
• Understanding the chronological order of events
• Confirming the full impact of the incident, including the number and range of users affected
• Identifying any events that could have triggered the incident (e.g. a recent change, some user action?)
• Knowledge searches looking for previous occurrences by searching previous Incident/Problem Records and/or Known Error Databases or manufacturers’/suppliers’ Error Logs or Knowledge Databases.

Date: 2014-12-29; view: 904