Compensating Through Classification

There are a MANY suggestions regarding category structure. Good examples can be found here:

http://www.itsmsolutions.com/newsletters/DITYvol6iss8.htm
http://www.itilforums.com/showthread.php?t=27

So we came up with a simple category tree which can cover Incident, Service Request, Problem, and Change in two tiers. This tree defines root-cause items that would typically be contained in the referenced CI if Configuration Management was being implemented.

The way these categories are worded provides a straight forward approach to separating Incidents and Service Requests for purposes of reporting. The alternative would have been to add an additional Type field to separate Incident from Service Request.

Example:
Client Hardware:Outage - Incident
Server Hardware:Degradation - Incident
Client Software:Education - Service Request
Client Hardware:Provision - Service Request

Basically the final tier defines the action which can be cross referenced to either Incident or Service Request. Additionally, the final tier is 100% consistent among all Tier 1 items. ie. All Tier 1 classifications have an Outage and Degradation as Tier 2 options. This minimizes available categories and simplifies understanding.

We have also provided for a Service field. Within this service list we are defining all items currently listed in our business facing Service Catalog.

These items combined should allow us to report on Incidents, Service Requests, Problematic CI Items, and Affected Service. Additionally, we believe these simple categories can also be applied to Problem and Change records without rework or an additional category tier.

We are hoping to capture many of the benefits of a full ITIL implementation as a result. Fine tuning will certainly be required.