Incident management (IM) is an IT service management (ITSM) process area.[1] The first goal of the incident management process is to restore a normal service operation as quickly as possible and to minimize the impact on business operations, thus ensuring that the best possible levels of service quality and availability are maintained. 'Normal service operation' is defined here as service operation within service-level agreement (SLA). It is one process area within the broader ITIL and ISO 20000 environment.
ISO 20000 defines the objective of Incident management (part 1, 8.2) as: To restore agreed service to the business as soon as possible or to respond to service requests.[2]
ITIL 2011 defines an incident as:
The ITIL incident management process ensures that normal service operation is restored as quickly as possible and the business impact is minimized. ITIL Service Operation. AXELOS. 30 May 2007. ISBN 978-0113310463.
The main challenges and cause for problems in the Incident management are: