Preparing for the Unexpected: Major Incident Management Process Announced

The ESR program, in collaboration with IT Services, has improved how we serve the university during major incidents - unplanned interruptions or reductions in service quality, which have a significant impact on business and end users. Now available for use, the Major Incident Management process leverages the university’s customer-focused approach to service by enabling cross-system teams to work quickly to resolve a major incident. 

With the Major Incident Management process, business and technical teams help service owners prepare in advance of a major incident to effectively tackle any underlying technical issues, keeping leadership and customers appropriately informed and engaged along the way.

“This process was actually something already in use within IT Services as an internal process,” said Major Incident Process Owner Jeno Bonetti, who led the charge. “However, as ESR services took flight, teams on the business side were increasingly involved tracking and resolving incidents, working without a safety net. The business teams needed established pathways to handle the unexpected and communicate to the impacted users. This meant that we needed to open our internal process to those teams and formally expand how we manage major incidents together.”

The process itself begins with service owners introducing the process to their business and technical teams. There they will begin familiarizing themselves with the process, from identifying an issue and declaring a major incident to escalating as needed and establishing affected audiences. After this, they start documenting the roles and responsibilities of all required parties to be enacted immediately upon the declaration of a major incident in a service or service offering. 

“Whether it’s a change we plan for or not, it is absolutely critical to our success as a university that we have the necessary framework and resources to quickly resolve an incident together and to communicate those changes efficiently and effectively,” said OCM Director Lynn Underwood. “This model reflects the kind of transparency, consistency and cross-system collaboration that is the foundation of the ESR program at large.”