One of the key performance indicators for IT Ops is MTTR (Mean-Time-To-Resolution). MTTR essentially measures the length of your incident management lifecycle: from detection; through assignment, triage and investigation; to remediation and resolution. IT Ops teams strive to shorten their incident management lifecycle and lower their MTTR, to meet their SLAs and maintain healthy infrastructures and services. But that’s often easier said than done.
It has been eight years since The Phoenix Project was published and a lot has changed since then! I started to think about what we’ve learned in that time. It starts with the theory of constraints. I still see it all the time. Organizations take actions which are merely temporary, putting out fires but not solving for the underlying causes of those fires.
Low MTTR is the much-desired nirvana-state in IT Operations. One of the most painful parts of the incident management lifecycle, which prevents the achievement of this nirvana, is triage: the time it takes first incident responders to determine the next action when facing a barrage of IT incidents. Why?
In one of our recent webinars we discussed a substantial challenge IT Ops teams face in today’s complex IT environments: defining and clearly communicating incident/operational roles and processes, in an effort to create a well-coordinated incident management lifecycle. This lifecycle is essential for restoring service as quickly as possible when disruptions occur. Following are the highlights of that discussion, also recently published in an ApmDigest article.
There are many hidden costs in running sub-optimal IT operations, that most organizations don’t consider. Enterprises often look at service downtime as their only KPI, but that is really only the tip of the iceberg. Without a properly operating incident management lifecycle, enterprises tend to support poorly performing services instead of fixing them.
In one of our recent webinars we discussed a challenge in digital transformation that is top of mind for many IT Ops leaders: how to actually transform with the least amount of pain… No matter how tired people are of the term “digital transformation”, it still represents an imperative strategy for enterprises wishing to survive in today’s dynamic business environment, let alone see growth and increased market value.
