Incident, Problem and Known Error definitions in ITIL

Incident, Problem and Known Error definitions in ITIL

Common definitions and language are the key factors in communication. That's why ITIL has its own language and set of specific words widely used by all people working in ITIL environment. Below are definitions for the incident, problem and known error. These three phrases are very common for the Incident Management process and it is crutial to understand differences between them.

Incident - an incident is any event that is not part of the standard opration of a service and that causes - or may cause - an interruption to, or a reduction in, the quality of that service. A good example of an incident can be lack of free space on somebody's hard disk.

Problem - a problem is the unknown underlying cause of one or more incidents. One can ask when the incident becomes a problem? The answer is never. Basically dealing with problems is the responsibility of the Problem Management process but we put problem's definition here as the problems have close relationship with incidents.

Known Error - is an incident or problem for which the root cause is known and for which a temporary workaround or permanent alternative has been identified. Know error is in place as long as it is permanently fixed by a change. Appropriate Request For Change (RFC) has to be raised in order to fix the known error. Known Errors simillary to Problems are in the scope of responsibility of Problem Management.