Incident to Problem
What is an incident?
ITIL defines an incident as an unplanned interruption to or quality reduction of an IT service. Either a bug, task or change request and listed as an incident. The way incidents differ from problems and releases is; An incident is an interruption of normal service.
What is a problem?
ITIL defines a problem as the underlying cause of one or more incidents. When reporting a problem there are four key details which are needed; Root cause, Impact, Symptoms and Solution. Root cause and Symptoms are key to identifying the problem in future (if reoccurring) and linking incidents to the problem. Impact is for the priority planning mainly, however its also good documentation and great for reports. Solution is for after the problem has been solved, either by a work around or a developed fix (see problem to change for more details).
How an incident becomes a problem
The image below is the most common way an incident(s) will become a problem. An incident which is, reoccurring, related to previous incidents or a singular major incident are all way of which an incident elevates to problem.
Being able to recognise similarities and cause of incidents is key to creating problems. Therefore, problem creation can be potentially uncertain. This is why communication and knowledge of a project is very important for problem creation. That said, problem creation is responsibility of the service team.