5.8 Roles of the Incident Management process

Processes span the organisation's hierarchy. Therefore it is important to define the responsibilities associated with the activities that have to be performed in the process. To remain flexible, it is advisable to use the concept of roles; in many organisations roles may be combined because of the small size of the organisation or because of cost. For example, many organisations combine the roles of Change Management and Configuration Management. A role embraces a set of responsibilities, tasks and levels of authorisation.

5.8.1 Incident Manager

An Incident Manager has the responsibility for:

• driving the efficiency and effectiveness of the Incident Management process
• producing management information
• managing the work of Incident support staff (first-and second-line)
• monitoring the effectiveness of Incident Management and making recommendations for improvement
• developing and maintaining the Incident Management systems.

In many organisations, the role of Incident Manager is assigned to the (function) Service Desk Supervisor.

5.8.2 Incident-handling support staff

First-line support (Service Desk) responsibilities include:

• Incident registration
• routing service requests to support groups when Incidents are not closed
• initial support and classification
• ownership, monitoring, tracking and communication
• resolution and recovery of Incidents not assigned to second-line support
• closure of Incidents.

Second-line support (specialist groups that may be part of the Service Desk) will be involved in tasks such as:

• handling service requests
• monitoring Incident details, including the Configuration Items affected
• Incident investigation and diagnosis (including resolution where possible)
• detection of possible Problems and the assignment of them to the Problem Management team for them to raise Problem records
• the resolution and recovery of assigned Incidents.

Ownership, monitoring, tracking and communication tasks cover:

• monitoring the status and progress towards resolution of all open Incidents
• keeping affected Users informed about progress
• escalating the process if necessary.