One of the biggest challenges in running an incident management is managing the expectations of the Technical & Business stakeholders. Everyone is entitled to understand what happened, whats the impact, what the current status is and how long do we expect to have the issue. However, this is usually done in a sporadic way.
I have seen incident time extended drastically due to different participants jumping on a technical bridge constantly asking for updates; this stops the flow as someone needs to provide another brief and then try to pickup from where you had just left off.
To overcome these and other stakeholder expectation issues you need to:
- > Perform a stakeholder analysis.
- > Setup different bridges.
- > Assign Roles.
Stakeholder Analysis
To make this successful, it needs to be understood who the players are that need to be communicated to for each type of service impact and what they require to prevent constant interruption. Sounds logical I know, but this is something I rarely see done properly. If this is done correctly then much time is saved with every incident as the stakeholders are known for each type of business or system impact.
Setup Different Bridges
I know many companies do this already, but they are not often adhered to. It makes perfect sense to have a technical bridge purely for the technical MIM team and associated SME's running the incident and a separate business bridge for business communication and updates on status and impact. If you can get adherence for a set formal structure for the when these are run, and how the information flows between them, so that it meets the needs of all concerned parties then you will have a successful medium for a communication plan.
Assign Roles
To enable a clear communications plan that delivers and meets the expectations of the stakeholders you need to tie in the above points with a role structure in the incident lifecycle. If you assign roles to certain staff to run specific stream such as MIM Lead, Containment Lead, Workaround Lead, Technical Cause Lead & Communication Lead and give them a run-sheet that outlines the steps in that role and when the communications points are and who with, then you will start to see a model that removes all this pain and frustration.
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