Applying Lean to Major Incident Management
Incident Management is arguably the most popular (or most adopted) ITIL process in IT organisations. Even if IT organisations have not adopted ITIL, they will have some form of incident management. Wikipedia states " The first goal of the incident management process is to restore a normal service operation as quickly as possible and to minimize the impact on business operations, thus ensuring that the best possible levels of service quality and availability are maintained" (1). The most demanding incidents to resolve tend to be the incidents with the greatest impact and urgency. These incidents are often classed as major or critical incidents (or P1s, Severity 1s, etc). For these incidents, the service desk or the support groups may assign them to dedicated personnel (commonly called Incident Managers) to centrally manage the incident and communications. It is not surprising that during such incidents, many stakeholders are in urgent need of communications and upda