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Matti Grönroos
MIM - Major Incident Management
It is more about the organization's crisis communication and mode of operation in exceptional situations than information technology. The idea of the procedure is to protect the expert staff from external pressure. Thus, they can concentrate on resolving the incident. Also, its purpose is to enable quick decisions.
A well-implemented MIM avoids oxymorons like: Report every 30 minutes, why the work is not progressing.
- Resourcing for major incidents in advance
- Decision-making related to operational priorities while the MIM is active
- Internal and external communications
Before Anything Happens
A key part of MIM work happens before anything has happened. Each party nominates one or more representatives to the MIM management team (ITIL: MRT, MIM Response Team). The representatives must have decision making power enough, especially related to priorities and resourcing. When the operations are extensive and round-the-clock, a good practice is to nominate a number of duty managers to rotate. However, it is often necessary to assign a permanent responsibility for planning and preparations to someone.
The membership of the MIM Response Team is a high priority responsibility. Almost any work must be suspended in the event of an MIM alert. MIM cannot work if one participates in it, if one happens to have time.
It is essential to prepare for MIM in advance as much as possible. It is too late to begin planning when a MIM case is triggered.
The preparation shall create at least
- Common criteria to initiate the MIM. This is not to be carved in the rock. The criteria must be bypassed if the situation requires it.
- The people alert procedure. Who is to call the people and whom are to be called.
- List of MIM Response Team members and their contact info
- List of persons to be informed
- Distribution lists for internal and external communications
- MIM Response Team meeting and decision-making practices, with a working schedule
- Templates for communications materials
- Communications policy
When Something Happens
When a major incident is detected, the MIM Response Team is alerted. At the same time, the predefined specialist group is to be alerted if any. Those who are not directly affected by the situation can be released from the MIM Response Team. However, they must be ready to rejoin if the situation changes.
When the specialist group is working, the MIM Response Team shall disturb the workgroup as little as possible. It is good practice for the workgroup to elect a spokesperson, who will be the only one to discuss with the MIM Response Team: exchanging status information and receiving prioritization directives.
The MIM Response Team is responsible for communications and for the text of press releases.
After the dust has settled and the services returned into the business-as-usual state, it is a good practice to start a Problem Management case to find out the root case, if it is not obvious. In general, creating a final report shall be written as a lessons-learnt document.