Problem management that prevents incidents

Problem management prevents incidents by reducing their number and impact through two complementary halves: reactive work, which investigates incidents that have already occurred, and proactive work, which hunts for risks before they cause disruption. According to John Sansbury, the difference between good problem management and good intentions is disciplined follow-through.

• Reactive problem management is well understood. When an incident recurs, a problem record is raised, the root cause is found, and a known error with a workaround is documented while a permanent fix is scheduled.
• Proactive problem management is where value compounds, and it is where most teams fall short. It means mining incident data for patterns, so that risks are found before they bite.
• Proactive work also means reviewing changes for fragility and treating near-misses as free lessons, learning from events that did not cause an incident.
• Follow-through separates good problem management from good intentions. A known error database only pays off if it is consulted, maintained and trusted by the people on the front line, so the database must be kept current and credible for those who rely on it.