The use of IT-related services has increased massively over the past years and it shows no signs to stop. But alongside the usage increasing the risks also increases, because what will happen when the IT-services that so many rely upon suddenly cease to function, or in other ways become inaccessible? To protect against such scenarios it is increasingly more common for IT-service businesses to use incident management, whose purpose is to recover IT-services to their functional state, using predefined processes, should an event occur. It is common for IT-service businesses when implementing an incident management process to use some kind of framework or method to facilitate and streamline its work process, and as of writing this paper, the most used frameworks are ITIL and COBIT.
It is very common for an IT-service business that in the incident management process develop a system or application whose purpose is to facilitate and streamline the incident management, and these are commonly referred to as Incident Management Systems. Even though ITIL and COBIT being widely used worldwide, there are some weaknesses in them, regarding Incident Management Systems, since both of the frameworks lack focus and depth of what an Incident Management System should manage. Such lack of focus and depth of a vital and central part of the Incident Management process, may prove expensive to IT-service businesses since the business needs to investigate what the system needs to manage, and how to manage it.
This paper address the problem with ITIL and COBIT lack of focus and depth regarding the central part of the incident management process, the Incident Management System by investigating and reciprocate the following questions.
Which implied and explicit requirements should an Incident Management System meet?
Which Incident Management System requirements can be found from the most used frameworks regarding Incident Management?
How well does the identified requirements match those requirements made by a real world company?
The target audience for this paper is mainly IT-service business or individuals that considers themselves in need of a compilation of requirements that an Incident Management System should meet and can be used as a supporting tool when implementing or purchasing a new Incident Management System. By identifying requirements that an Incident Management Systems should meet from the most used framework regarding Incident Management, this paper will contribute with means for the implementation of the Incident Management System, reducing the costs for the investigation of demands of such a system. It will also present interested parties with a concrete example, the single case study, to compare with the requirements from the frameworks, contributing with a benchmark for IT-service business to start from when implementing or purchasing an Incident Management System.