Confidentiality and Copyright

The information contained in this document is confidential and is issued by DSP on the understanding that it will be used only by the staff of, or consultants to, the Client and where consultants are employed, the use of this information is restricted to use in relation to the business. In particular, the contents of this document may not be disclosed in whole or in part to any other party without the prior written consent of DSP © - Database Service Provider Global Limited. All rights reserved.

Version	Date	Update	Owner
1.0	01/10/2022	Process Live / Staff Training Completed	KB
1.1	01/05/2025	Problem Process Updated to reflect new ITSM toolset - no change to web page	KB

Reviewers	Date	Update	Owner
KB	03/10/2023	Additional Staff Training Completed - No changes to Process	KB
KB	30/09/2024	No update - likely amendments - Q2 - 2025	KB
KB	01/05/2025	Process Reviewed Minor Amendments to reflect new ITSM toolset - no change to web page content	KB

Section 1 - Introduction

Welcome to the DSP family, we offer award-winning IT consultancy and managed services for Oracle, Microsoft and Google technologies. We specialise in data platform management, application development, engineered systems and Cloud with a strong presence in Oracle RDBMS, OCI, Exadata, SQL Server, Azure, APEX, and GCP. DSP is a leading technology partner in the UK and has been recognised for that by our technology partners and industry through a wide range of awards and accolades.

As a DSP Managed Services Customer – DSP Offer a range of ITIL based processes to provide Customer Excellence and a standardised our approach to IT Service Management offering. The following document is a brief overview of Problem Management and how the Problem Management Process works at DSP. While offered as a default component of our Managed Service, both Professional Service customers and those customers undergoing Transition (onboarding) can access Problem Management on request via their Account Manager.

Section 2 - What is Problem Management?

Problem Management seeks to minimise and adverse impact of Incidents by preventing Incidents from happening. For Incidents that have already occurred, Problem Management works to prevent these Incidents from happening again.

ITIL defines a "Problem" as "the underlying cause of one or more Incidents"

Problem Management works closely with Incident Management, but it is not the same:

Incident Management is about restoring services as quickly as possible (and within SLA) to ensure business continuity, sometimes by applying temporary solutions (workaround)
Problem Management is tasked with analysing root causes and preventing Incidents from happening in the future

All Problems should be logged by DSP Team Members on behalf of the DSP customers as Problem Records within DSP's ITSM (Cherwell) toolset, where their status can be tracked, and a complete historical record maintained.

Section 3 – Usage of Problem Management

Examples of where the Problem Management process can be invoked for DSP or Customer events (usually incidents) that are –

Mitigated but not resolved (service has been returned via a workaround but the issue is not fixed)

Re-occurring / intermittent

Performance issues where the Root Cause (RC) is unclear

Events where a Root Cause Analysis (RCA) is required by either DSP or the customer (i.e. following a Major Incident)

A proactive Problem is raised following trending work whereby DSP have identified a sequence of events whereby they look to be the symptom of the same underlying issue (Service Reporting / Incidents / Health Checks / Logs etc)

Section 5 - Reactive and Proactive Problem Records

The Problem Management process uses reactive as well as proactive approaches:

Reactive Problem Management is triggered if issues are identified that require analysis and the deployment of a longer-term solution (not workaround) or an explicit RCA (such as a Major Incident). For example, Problem Management may pick up an Incident, or a set of related Incidents, whose root cause could not be resolved during Incident Management, to prevent similar Incidents from recurring.
Proactive Problem Management is an ongoing activity that tries to identify issues to prevent resulting Incidents from happening. For example, Problem Management will analyse Incident Records, operational logs, periodic Health Checks etc. to find patterns and trends that may indicate the presence of underlying errors.

Section 6 - Known Error?

Not all problem records can be closed as successfully resolved. Reasons can include –

Event did not re-occur / insufficient information to investigate
Solution is cost based and either the customer or DSP could not warrant the return on investment (ROI)
Workaround in place / inability to progress investigation
RC cannot be determined

In these cases the PRB should be agreed to be closed with the customer and recorded as a known error to avoid open problem records with no associated actions

Less Incidents
Time to resolve issues once a service has been returned
Less Resolution SLA Breaches (Root Cause Analysis should not occur in an Incident Ticket)
A more rounded service allowing us to distinguish incidents from problems
Solutions that can be deployed to multiple customers levelling up all customers and not customers in isolation

Section 9 - Creating and Managing a Problem Record

Problem records can only be created by DSP Team members in agreement with Customer representatives and not directly by customers or vendors.
A customer can request a problem record either by updating one or more customer ticket or by contacting the Service Delivery Team or SDM.
Problems are then assembled into a PRB Register and discussed in a Problem Forum (this can be combined with Service Review Meetings / Incident Review Meetings or CSIP Meetings as required to ensure the volume and frequency of meetings meets the customer’s needs.
All Problem records are raised and updated within DSP’s ITSM Toolset (Cherwell)

*As part of DSP’s service offering a customer’s service may be accessed as part of Project Services (PS), Managed Services (MS) or as part of Service Transition and Onboarding Services. By default, services accessed by DSP customers as part of PS or Onboarding/Transition Services are not in scope of the PRB Management Process.

However, if escalated the PRB process can be used to help structure DSP Problem resolution activity while being excluded from service availability, response and resolution SLAs for those services not presently covered under a Managed Service Agreement (MSA) / MS Contract.

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Contents

Document Control

Confidentiality and Copyright

Validity of Information

Process Review

Section 1 - Introduction

Section 2 - What is Problem Management?

Section 3 – Usage of Problem Management

Section 4 – Incident or Problem?

4.1 - Incident Management

4.2 - Problem Management

Section 5 - Reactive and Proactive Problem Records

Section 6 - Known Error?

Section 7 - High Level Problem Process

Section 8 - The Advantages of Problem Management at DSP?

Section 9 - Creating and Managing a Problem Record

Section 10 - Scope of Problem Management at DSP?

Appendix: Problem Management and ITIL (V3.0 / V4.0)

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