The goal of Problem management is to minimise the adverse impact of incidents and problems on the business that are caused by errors within the IT Infrastructure, and to prevent recurrence of incidents related to these errors.

In order to achieve this goal, Problem management seeks to get to the root cause of Incidents and then initiate actions to improve or correct the situation. The Problem management process has both reactive and proactive aspects. The reactive aspect is concerned with solving problems in response to one or more Incidents. Proactive problem management is concerned with identifying and solving problems and known errors before Incidents occur in the first place.

Problem Tracker

The Problem Tracker holds Problem record information ONLY, there is no Incident data available within the document. You need to be registered for the Service Management Group to access this information - Please register here

BT's criteria for opening a problem falls into the following categories:

• An incident is resolved and the service is restored but the root cause is unknown. Problem record opened to identify root cause.
• An effective workaround to an incident is identified. Problem record opened to identify permanent resolution.
• A configuration Item that has previously worked successfully has developed a fault. Problem record opened to pro-actively analyse adverse trends to prevent the occurrence of an incident and improve infrastructure resilience.

N.B. Please be advised, however, that if there is a high priority issue and Senior Management believe it would be beneficial for Problem Management to be involved then a problem record would be raised which may not specifically meet the above criteria.