The problem with problem is people

Problem management is the only ITIL discipline that prevents incidents from occurring or recurring. Given its potential impact, you would expect it to be viewed as a strategic organisational capability. Yet many organisations undervalue and overlook its importance, argues Ian MacDonald.

All ITIL processes are equal, but some are more equal than others

In many organisations, problem management is often the ‘poor relation’, treated as a lesser priority by management and practitioners alike than its peer discipline, incident management. Over time, this fosters poor attitudes and behaviours, creating a culture of indifference to its importance and value.

Apples and pears

This indifference towards problem management typically stems from a lack of management commitment and strategic positioning, driven by misplaced perceptions and unfair comparisons. While incident and problem management share the common goal of minimising business impact, their approaches are fundamentally different.

Consider this comparison: incident management is like a paramedic focused on rapid response and stabilisation, while problem management is the Accident & Emergency department, diagnosing issues and ensuring long-term health. While both are essential, their timescales and skill sets differ significantly.

Incident management aims to deliver results in minutes or hours as it prioritises speed, urgency, and immediate stability, aiming to restore service as quickly as possible. In contrast, problem management operates on timelines of days, weeks or even months as it takes a methodical approach, identifying and verifying root causes to implement permanent long-term solutions.

Misplaced management perceptions

When success is measured primarily by speed, incident management’s quick fixes appear more effective than problem management’s long-term solutions. This reinforces the false perception that problem management is slow and ineffective. The urgency of incidents further amplifies incident management’s visibility and perceived value, strengthening its priority over problem management.

These often-ingrained perceptions shape the IT organisation’s culture and priorities:

• Resolution is valued over prevention: Practitioners receive more recognition for solving incidents than preventing them.
• A ‘superhero’ culture emerges: Those frequently involved in incident resolution are seen as more valuable.
• Incident involvement boosts visibility: Being a firefighter is believed to raise practitioners’ profiles and career prospects.
• Firefighting takes precedence: Resources, budgets, and leadership attention are skewed towards incident response rather than prevention.

Without management support and commitment, problem management remains poorly understood and underappreciated. Its core purpose of preventing incidents and recurrence is deprioritised, and lacks focus, resources, and investment. This ongoing cultural indifference reinforces its diminished status as a discipline that is of lesser importance and delivers minimal value. Meanwhile, incidents continue to recur that could have been prevented.

Establishing effective problem management: prioritising the right dimension

So, how do we address this? ITIL 4 recommends using the ‘Four Dimensions’ when establishing or improving any IT practice:

• Organisations and people
• Information and technology
• Value streams and processes
• Partners and suppliers.

This encourages a holistic approach to ensure no critical elements are overlooked. However, my observations are that many organisations gravitate and overemphasise processes, procedures (value streams and processes), and tools (information and technology). While important, they are only enablers.

Problem management doesn’t happen without people. Even with the best tools and processes, if staff aren’t motivated, engaged, or incentivised to perform problem management activities, nothing will change. At the end of the day, it’s your people, not your tools, that identify root causes and drive permanent solutions.

Strategic positioning is key to shaping the right attitudes, behaviours and culture. People must understand its value, embrace within their role, and be motivated to apply their expertise in solving the underlying cause of incidents. A strong organisational foundation is essential, making the organisations and people dimension the primary area of focus if problem management is to become a key organisational capability.

Easy as ‘ABC’: 8 key steps

The organisations and people dimension requires leadership and management focus to identify the essential strategic elements that will positively influence attitudes, behaviours, and culture, embedding problem management as a core capability that delivers value. Key steps include:

1. Create a strong value proposition: Promote problem management’s value. Make this compelling by focusing on business and customer outcomes like service quality, service stability, CX/UX, and managing technical debt. Avoid ITIL jargon like ‘incident prevention’ and ‘root cause’.
2. Branding: The word problem can have negative connotations. When naming your problem management team and roles choose a positive solution orientated name i.e., service stability, service reliability, or service protection to reinforce your value proposition.
3. Align with IT objectives: Make incident prevention a clear IT objective and/or critical success factor with top-level KPIs and aligned team and individual objectives. Remember the adage of what gets measured, gets done!
4. Leadership commitment:  IT leaders need to evangelise the benefits of problem management, champion its adoption and support teams doing it. (Cynical me:  If their rewards depend on incident prevention, they’ll ensure it happens!)
5. Clarify roles and responsibilities: IT practitioners are responsible for problem-solving. The problem management team oversees the process (accountable) but doesn’t solve issues directly. IT practitioners (responsible) own the root causes of issues in their domains. Make incident prevention explicit in formal job descriptions.
6. Education and training: ITIL isn’t a silver bullet. Train IT teams in real problem-solving techniques like Kepner-Tregoe, 8D, and 5 Whys. Make your central team a centre of excellence in these techniques.
7. Establish governance: Set up a Problem Review Board (PRB), chaired monthly by senior management, this is akin to the change advisory board. The PRB ensures that progress is being made with high-impact problems and that any proposed closures are rigorously reviewed. No true root cause? No closure.
8. Reward and recognition: Recognise and reward incident prevention to drive cultural change. Balance incentives between incident and problem management.

Reflection

Problem management is only as effective as the people behind it. The best tools and processes mean little without motivated, engaged, and incentivised staff. Organisations that embed problem management as a strategic capability, backed by strong leadership and a problem-solving culture, can shift from reactive firefighting to proactive incident prevention. This shift leads to greater service reliability, enhanced CX/UX, and reduced technical debt.