Managing incidents

At the heart of the IT department will be the service desk, or helpdesk. This is the first point of contact with internal customers, the front office, and as such it determines how customers view the IT department.Incident management, an ITIL discipline within Service Operations, involves dealing with a customer problem and getting them back using the information systems as quickly as possible. It does not necessarily mean we solve the underlying problem. It may involve a workaround, a temporary replacement, or perhaps a temporary change in business process. We measure the success of incident management is terms of how quickly we respond to a helpdesk call and get the customer back in action, achieving their business goals.

Question: Define incident management and give some examples of the process. Explain the role of the helpdesk in incident management. Present some detail of a service desk management system such as Marval Software, or ServiceNow. What is a ticket and what is its purpose in incident management. Explain the concept of escalation, both technical and managerial. Outline a service level agreement which could be used in managing a service desk.