Major Incident Management Process

Purpose

The Major Incident Management Process aims to accelerate the resolution process to restore normal service operations as quickly as possible to minimize the adverse impact on business operations and ensure that the best possible service quality and availability levels are maintained.

What is a Major Incident

A Major Incident is the highest-impact, highest-urgency incident critical to the SoftwareOne Business. Priority P1 is considered a major incident that prevent the customers from operating, which demand a response beyond the routine Incident Management Process.

Scope

The Major Incident Management process will effectively and efficiently manage all high-priority Incidents that are not part of the Standard Operation of a service. Major Incident Management includes any event in which the service is not available.

Objective

The objective of the Major Incident Management Process includes:

Accelerate the resolution process to restore normal service operation as quickly as possible.
Ensure that an appropriate Incident Manager/Major Incident Team is in place to manage a Major incident.
Ensure that Customers/Stakeholders are informed of service interruptions, degradations, and resolutions.
Provide timely information about the causes of incidents and any relevant investigation findings.
Create a Problem ticket for root cause analysis.
Conduct a Major Incident review once the service is restored. Its purpose is to analyze the Incident and understand what can be done to prevent a similar incident.

Who can raise a Major Incident?

Authorized contacts of SoftwareOne customers
Technical Support staff/Internal Stakeholders may notice potential failures and raise a Major Incident
Automatically triggered alerts based on system failures

Major Incident Reporting Source

Customers can report a Major Incident through:

Phone
E-mail
SoftwareOne’s Cloud Management Portal
System-generated alerts/events

While a customer can report a Major Incident through any of these channels, the incident must be raised through the telephone to receive a P1 priority.

Customers who raise a Major Incident via the telephone will receive an immediate response from SoftwareOne.

Roles

Role	Responsibility
Technical Agent	Welcome authorized callers as an entry point in the Incident Management Process by phone and e-mail Categorize and Prioritize Incident Gather required information to assess and analyze the issue Promote the Incident to a Major Incident Understand the Service Level and execute accordingly Internal and external communication of the incident status, engaging the Incident Manager of Major Incident submission
Incident Manager	Overseeing all aspects of the Major Incident management process from evaluation to resolution Assess and accept the Major Incident Act as a single point of contact for Major Incidents Form the Major Incident team by identifying the appropriate resources Setting up of technical bridges to troubleshoot issues Ensure Agents are delivering against SLA, including update notifications Track the Major Incident throughout its lifecycle until the Incident is resolved Accountable for making sure Customer/Requestor/Internal Stakeholders (Leadership Team, Service Delivery Manager, Account Manager) as applicable are notified throughout the Major Incident lifecycle Escalate to higher management and stakeholders if the Major Incident requires escalation
Major Incident Team	Perform investigation and diagnosis of the Major Incident Provide technical communication to the user regarding quick fixes Correct the issue or provide a workaround to the Customer and restore normal service as quickly as possible Deep dive into issues to find the cause and provide a workaround or a permanent fix Ensure that the requestor agrees that the resolution provided addresses their needs Prepare the Post Incident report
Service Manager	Proactive involvement in an emergency or critical events impacting client organization Keeping the client updated on the resolution progress of E1 & P1 tickets Providing the RCA shared by the support team Sharing suggestions to avoid such instances in the future based on RCA and recommendations from the support team Open conference bridge with the customer, as applicable

Process

RACI Matrix: Major Incident Management

Key:

R=Responsible
A=Accountable
C=Consulted
I=Informed

Stages	Requestor (Customer)	Incident Manager	Major Incident Team	Technical Agent
Categorize & Prioritize	I	A		R
Promote to Major Incident	I	A		R
Form Major Incident Team	I	A/R	C/I
Set up Technical Bridge	I	A/R	C
Investigation & Diagnosis	I	A	R
Identify Resolution	C/I	A	R
Open a ticket with Vendor	I	A	R
Customer communication	I	A	R
Apply Resolution	I	A	R
Verify Resolution	C/I	A	R
Create Knowledge Article	I	A	R
Create Post Incident Report	I	A	R

Priority Matrix

Priority Calculator

The priorities are derived from impact and urgency.

Priority	Impact
Urgency		Critical	High	Medium	Low
	Critical	P1	P2	P2	P3
	High	P2	P2	P3	P3
	Medium	P2	P3	P3	P4
	Low	P3	P3	P4	P4

Priority Description

Priority	Impact	Description
P1	Critical	Issue is causing an impact across an entire service with no viable alternate solution

Impact Definitions

Impact	Description	Detailed Description
Critical	Business critical system is down	An application or infrastructure service that is essential to the operations of the business (e.g. supports key business functions such as email, finance or customer service) is unavailable.
High	Production system down	An application or infrastructure service that provides a service to the business but is not essential to the business's daily operations or core functions (e.g. training systems, project management tools and internal content management systems) is unavailable.
Medium	Production system impaired	A business critical or production system is available but not functioning optimally. It may be experiencing downtime or other problems that limit its ability to provide service to its users.
Low	System impaired	A non-production system (e.g. a test environment, a training environment or a research application) is available but not functioning optimally. It may be experiencing downtime or other problems that limit its ability to provide service to its users.

Urgency Definitions

Urgency	Description	Detailed Description
Critical	No viable workaround and effected work is time sensitive	An issue is affecting work that is time sensitive and critical to the operations of the business (e.g. processing urgent financial transactions, processing customer orders or dealing with medical emergencies) and there is no viable work-around.
High	Workaround available and effected work is time sensitive	An issue is affecting work that is time sensitive and critical to the operations of the business (e.g. processing urgent financial transactions, processing customer orders or dealing with medical emergencies) but there is a viable work-around (e.g. a backup system or alternate manual process).
Medium	No viable workaround and effected work is not time sensitive	An issue is affecting work that is not time sensitive (e.g. data entry, research, test and development) and there is no viable work-around. This type of work does not have an immediate deadline and can be completed within a flexible timeframe.
Low	Workaround available and effected work is not time sensitive	An issue is affecting work that is not time sensitive (e.g. data entry, research, test and development) and there is a viable work-around (e.g. a backup system or alternate manual process). This type of work does not have an immediate deadline and can be completed within a flexible timeframe.

Service Level Agreements

Please refer to your Service Contract, and specifically:

Section 1 - Service Contract - to understand the Terms aligned to your Master Agreement
Section 2 - Services and Services Catalog for Service-Specific Service Level Agreements