Reader Questions:  Should an incident remain open if there is no workaround?  Should a problem ticket be created?  Should an incident/request ticket be created for a proactive problem ticket?

Third Sky Expert Answer:

Dick Szymanski, Director of Education, Third Sky

An incident remains open until the user is "sufficiently" restored to service. If there is no suitable solution or workaround, and the user is experiencing service down or degraded time, the incident is open and the downtime or degraded time clock is running.

In the case above, user still "down", opening a problem ticket does nothing to accelerate action to restore service. Perhaps, depending on the impact of the disruption it may be necessary to escalate or even enact a "major incident". The problem ticket is primarily used for circumstances where the user disruption can be solved, albeit imperfectly, and we want to be considering the true (permanent, root cause fix). At times, only solving the true root cause (and even an emergency change) will alleviate the incident and in that case we should be getting the fix done and, post fact, documenting the problem and emergency change for future reference.

A proactive problem "ticket" is an indication we are aware of something that might be manifest as an incident. The hope is the problem cycle will eradicate the potential flaw before it disrupts a user. The problem record also exists so that if our incident front line comes across the symptoms indicated by the proactively posted problem/known error, there will be a pre-determined course of action (an approved work around or a note to call so and so for more info). There is no incident until a user is disrupted.

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