IT failures

IT failures at big companies are very common. These incidents cause extensive financial damage. In particular companies in the information-intensive industry with internet services suffer from IT incidents, as shown in www.IsItDownRightNow.com. 

Large organizations have complex IT landscapes with many interdependent components. A disruption in one of these components results in disruptions in the interdependent components. The components in these landscapes are managed by multiple teams. Solving such IT incidents requires collaboration between these teams, resulting in collaboration challenges.

The figure below shows an example of such interdependencies. The component managed by the server team (left side) is disrupted. The disruptions result in a disrupted platform and two (web) applications. Since the business partners need the web application the work at the business partner comes to a halt. A new IT incident is born.

 

We studied a case in an IT operation department of a large multi-national company and identified ways to improve IT incident handling performance. That case study revealed that self-guidance and information sharing between teams significantly accelerates IT incident handling.

The implementation of self-guidance and visibility improved IT incident handling within the agreed service levels from 5% to 88%.

We implemented self-guidance with Delivery teams based on the work of Frank Niessink & Viktor Clerc and Remco van der Pols. Delivery teams have accountability for a set of services (such as incident handling), regardless of their position in the chain. Delivery teams are based on the same concepts as Agile/Scrum en DevOps.

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