Incident management: Human factors and minimising mean time to restore service

Unplanned IT outages can cost businesses money, as well as lost customer satisfaction, and a variety of additional hidden costs. Incident managers are employed by organisations to restore service from unplanned IT outages as expeditiously as possible. This research focused on two components employed by incident managers in doing their job to determine if particular components, or combinations of these components, result in a shorter amount of time to restore service than do others. The components are the characteristics displayed by incident managers and the problem-solving approaches used by incident managers when working to restore service from unplanned IT outages. The characteristics studied were being authoritative, being communicative, being decisive, being demanding, being entrepreneurial, being facilitative and being pragmatic. The two problem-solving approaches used by incident managers and investigated were a solution-focused approach to solving problems and a problem-focused approach to solving problems. The research further determined whether the particular characteristics or problem-solving approaches or combinations of these in a reduction in the amount of time to restore service compared to others.