Transforming Chaos into Order: Incident Management Process, Best Practices, and Steps

Did you realize, only 40% of companies with 100 employees or less have an Incident Response plan in place? Does that include you too? Even if it doesn't, this blog post is for you. Explore the Incident Management processes, best practices and steps so you can compare how your current IR process looks like and if you need to revamp it.

Impacts Management & Impact of Incidents

Incident Management is a core component of Information Technology (IT) service management that focuses on efficiently handling and resolving disruptions to IT services. These disruptions, known as incidents, can include a wide range of issues, such as system failures, software glitches, hardware malfunctions, or any other event that hinders the otherwise normal operation of IT services.

Pretty direct. Isn’t it?

The average cost of a data breach in 2023 was $4.24 million, according to IBM Security. 37% of servers had at least one unexpected outage in 2023, according to Veeam. Incidents can have a wide range of negative impacts on an organization, categorized into operational impacts, financial impacts, reputational impacts, employee impacts and loss of customer trust. A 1% decrease in customer satisfaction can lead to a 5-10% decrease in revenue, according to Bain & Company. The fact is, downtimes are bound to happen. Both planned and unplanned. So, it’s better to be ready with an Incident Response plan in place with the best Incident Management procedure.

All steps involved in the procedure of managing incidents that arise within the tech environment and infrastructure create the Incident Management process.

Incident Management Process

Except for the fact that every organization has a different Incident Management process. There are various factors influencing these differences in their Incident Management processes like the industry size, risk tolerance, resource & budget, compliance requirements, and organizational structure (ITIL-based Incident Management or an informal approach relying on key individuals).

While the foundation of Incident Management procedure remains the same as defined by ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library), which is in broad sense the identification, resolution and documentation, differences are bound to arise in

The number of defined severity levels and their associated response times can vary greatly.
How and when incidents are escalated to different levels of management can differ based on complexity and impact.
The detail and format of incident logs and reports can be customized to specific needs.
The preferred methods for informing stakeholders about incidents (e.g., email, internal platforms) can vary.
Some organizations might use sophisticated Incident Management software, while others still rely on spreadsheets or email threads.

Customized Incident Management Approach

A customized approach caters to individual requirements, resulting in quicker resolution times and minimized disruption. This empowers your Incident Response Team to manage incidents efficiently and confidently.

Tailoring Incident Management Processes according to incident severity and complexity ensures optimal resource utilization. Consequently, it seamlessly adjusts to evolving needs and situations.

There is no universal solution. The most effective Incident Management process is the one that aligns with an organization's distinct context and goals.

Incident Management: Unraveling the Key Stages

Every organization encounters disruptions, ranging from minor hitches to potential crises. How these incidents are managed significantly impacts operations, reputation, and financial standing.

Here's a detailed breakdown of the essential stages:

1. Identification
   The initial step involves detecting the incident. This process may entail monitoring systems, analyzing user reports, tracking media mentions, and responding to automated alerts. Think of it as triggering an alarm upon detecting an anomaly.

2. Triage and Prioritization
   Recognizing that not all incidents are equal, this stage entails assessing severity and impact, categorizing incidents as critical, high, medium, or low. Similar to sorting incoming tickets based on potential damage levels, prioritizing incidents aids in resource allocation and response efficiency.

a. Low-Priority Incidents:

• These incidents cause minimal disruptions, if any, to business functions.
• Workarounds can be easily devised without affecting services to users and customers.

b. Medium-Priority Incidents:

• This category may lead to moderate interruptions in work for some employees.
• While customers may experience slight inconvenience, the financial and security implications are generally manageable.

c. High-Priority Incidents:

• These incidents significantly disrupt business operations, affecting a substantial number of users.
• System-wide outages often fall into this category, carrying substantial financial impacts and potentially affecting customer satisfaction.

1. Containment and Response
   This stage is dedicated to taking immediate action to prevent the incident from spreading further. Actions may include isolating affected systems, disabling features, or temporarily taking services offline.

2. Resolution and Recovery
   Addressing the root cause is the focus here. This involves diagnosing the problem, implementing fixes, and restoring affected systems and data. For example, fixing issues gradually while ensuring no customer purchases are lost during peak traffic hours in an eCommerce store.

3. Closure and Review
   The final stage involves capturing lessons learned, conducting postmortems, and identifying strategies to prevent future incidents. It includes analyzing incident reports and updating response playbooks with newfound knowledge.

Adopting best practices at each stage of the Incident Management Workflow ensures that every disruption is handled with predefined steps, optimal resource allocation, and a commitment to continuous improvement. Ultimately, this approach minimizes chaos and builds a resilient response system.

Best Practices for Incident Management at Each Stage

During Identification:

Deploy comprehensive monitoring: Utilize a range of monitoring tools for system performance, security events, and user feedback.
Automate alerts and escalation based on predefined criteria: Ensure timely notifications for critical incidents requiring immediate attention.
Establish clear incident definitions and escalation thresholds: Ensure universal understanding of what constitutes an incident and when to escalate.

Encourage incident reporting: Prompt individuals to report incidents to the designated Incident Management team or help desk. Squadcast’s Webforms enable detailed incident reporting for both customers and employees.

During Triage and Prioritization:

Develop a standardized prioritization matrix: Define severity levels based on impact, urgency, and resource requirements.
Utilize decision trees or scoring systems: Facilitate consistent and rapid prioritization decisions.
Engage relevant stakeholders in complex prioritization cases: Collaborate with business owners and impacted teams for informed decisions.

During Containment and Response:

Prepare predefined Incident Response playbooks: Outline initial response steps for various incident types to save time and have solutions ready.
Implement containment strategies like isolation, throttling, or feature disabling: Minimize further damage and prevent broader impact.
Ensure access to tools and resources: Guarantee availability of diagnostic & monitoring tools, emergency contact lists, and disaster recovery procedures.
Establish a centralized Incident Management system or ticketing system: Utilize tools like Squadcast for seamless incident logging and tracking.

During Resolution and Recovery:

Focus on root cause analysis: Utilize log analysis, forensic tools, and expert assistance to identify the underlying cause.
Implement robust rollback strategies: Have tested procedures for reverting changes and restoring affected systems quickly.
Prioritize critical data recovery when necessary: Employ reliable backup and recovery solutions to minimize data loss.
Define roles and responsibilities for Incident Response team members: Include incident coordinators and technical experts for effective response.
Establish effective communication channels and escalation paths: Facilitate seamless coordination and collaboration during Incident Response, potentially utilizing an incident war room.

During Closure and Review:

Conduct thorough post-incident reviews: Analyze response actions, identify areas for improvement, and update playbooks accordingly.
Automate incident reporting and documentation: Simplify data collection and facilitate knowledge sharing.
Share lessons learned across the organization: Proactively disseminate insights to prevent future incidents, leveraging past experiences.
Perform post-incident reviews (postmortems) to evaluate Incident Response effectiveness and identify enhancement opportunities.
Assess the effectiveness of Incident Management processes: Identify any gaps or bottlenecks and implement corrective actions as needed.

Bonus Tips For Better Incident Response

Some more actionable tips for better Incident Response are:

Emphasize communication: Keep stakeholders informed throughout the incident with clear, concise, and frequent updates.
Prioritize training and drills: Regularly train your Incident Response team and practice playbooks to ensure coordinated and effective action.
Continuously improve: Regularly review and update your Incident Management processes based on experience and best practices.
Invest in automation and reliability tools: Leverage technology to automate repetitive tasks and improve response efficiency like Squadcast.
Why does Squadcast work as a best Incident Management platform for your business’s reliability needs?

Atlassian’s State of Incident Management Report highlights a few major pain points in Incident Management, like:

Difficult to get stakeholders involved: 36%
Lack of full visibility across IT infrastructure: 23%
Lack of context during an incident: 13%
Lack of automated responses: 9%
Lack of integration with a chat tool (Slack, Microsoft Teams): 8%
A dedicated Incident Management solution like Squadcast covers all points in the Incident Management workflow. It facilitates tasks that integrate On-Call Management, Incident Response, SRE workflows, alerting, enhances team collaboration through chatops tools, workflow automation, SLO tracking, status pages, incident analytics, and conducts incident postmortems. It specially promotes the SRE culture for Enterprise Incident Management and a preferred alternative to PagerDuty.