Problem management is typically defined as an aggregated process that analyses issues within an organisation and provides causation to adverse events and situations. A key element is how a major incident is handled as this is one of the most crucial processes for an enterprise. A major incident which is one with a significant negative business consequences needs to be handled with a well defined process which is not currently clearly defined in existing methodologies. This course addresses how an enterprise, with a focus on IT, needs to handle the major incident process which includes those outages and failures that are on the immediate horizon of any enterprise. It also deals with the aspects of dealing with problems with an organization in a generic fashion including supporting methodologies and processes.

1. ProblemManagementFoundation
Problem
Management
Foundation
Fixing and finding causation to problems when “Shit
happens!”

2. ProblemManagementFoundation
Introduction
Problem management is typically defined as an aggregated
process that analyses issues within an organisation and provides
causation to adverse events and situations.
A key element is how a major incident is handled as this is one of
the most crucial processes for an enterprise. A major incident
which is one with a significant negative business consequences
needs to be handled with a well defined process which is not
currently clearly defined in existing methodologies.
This course addresses how an enterprise, with a focus on IT, needs
to handle the major incident process which includes those outages
and failures that are on the immediate horizon of any enterprise.
It also deals with the aspects of dealing with problems with an
organisation in a generic fashion including supporting
methodologies and processes.

3. ProblemManagementFoundation
What does this course provide?
In a nutshell...
Develop an optimum strategy for dealing with mission-critical data
centre environments and IT assets based on consequence analysis.
Describe all components that are important for high availability in the
IT landscape and how to effectively set up the IT environment to be
geared for operational safety.
Apply relevant processes from the various industry frameworks.
Understand the various tools available to assist in IT Crisis management
to optimize the Major Incident process.
Become effective and efficient at IT Crisis management and introduce
cost optimisation into the business using time optimization.

4. ProblemManagementFoundation
What does this course provide?
In a nutshell...
Design a highly reliable and scalable IT architecture and learn what is
required to make the IT environment reliable and robust.
Understand the landscape of IT Risk and introduce real information
security abilities across all areas and disciplines.
Prioritise your company's competencies (which drives all business
decisions).
Identify and mitigate the risks associated with Major Incidents.
Search for workarounds during the initial investigations that can
reduce the clients pain.
Measure and audit the actions for missing safeguards/controls.

5. It’s not about the crisis
…but how you deal with it!

6. ProblemManagementFoundation
Course outline
1. Overview, introduction to crisis management
What is problem management?
Entities involved in problem management
ITIL’s incident and problem management
What is a Major Incident?
Vital Business Functions (VBF)
What does this course provide?
2. Perceptions, strategies to dealing with a crisis
Making Information Technology (IT) visible
Transparency – the importance of being ugly
3. Significant Havoc in Technology, the statistics and theory of a crisis
How complex systems fail by Richard Cook
Incident iceberg
Activities and outcomes

7. ProblemManagementFoundation
Course outline
4. Engineering to avoid a crisis, building and operating systems to deal with a
crisis
 Fail-over, resilience and redundancy
 Documentation
 Correct implementation
5. Tiger Teams, creating structured operations for dealing with a crisis
 History and background from space flight
 Teams: echo, whisky, delta, romeo, bravo, alpha
6. The Major incident lifecycle, timelines and attributes of a crisis
 Analogy to riding a bicycle
 Lifecycle Diagram
 The importance of time
 Metrics and measurement
 Detecting a negative event

8. ProblemManagementFoundation
Course outline
6. The Major incident lifecycle (cont.)
 Diagnosis
o Checklists
o Crime scene, Genchi Genbutsu, recording, visualization, prevailing
conditions
o Changes
 Repair, Restore, Recover, Resolution
 Workaround
o Firefighting
7. Mission Control, establishing a Crisis Management Operations Centre (CMOC)
 Best practices for the CMOC
 The three level CMOC
8. Communications
 Escalations

9. ProblemManagementFoundation
Course outline
9. Crisis management control points
 WAR rooms
 Technical Observation Post (TOP)
10. Tools
 Hardware, software, process
11. Analysing a major incident
 Incident consequence analysis
 Lessons learnt, After Action Review (AAR)
 Classification
 Problem solving tips
12. Simulation
 Training
 Testing
13. Budget
 Cost categories

10. ProblemManagementFoundation
Course outline
14. The IT risk landscape, measuring and quantifying associated risks
The risk matrix, areas and disciplines
SWOT
Lights, camera, action
Controls
Decisions
15. Continuous improvement, changing the impact and
consequences of future events
Deming wheel
Toyota Production System (TPS)
Prioritisation using the Pareto principle