problem vs incident vs issue

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stuck
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problem vs incident vs issue

Post by stuck »

I'm hoping Stuart will jump on this one...

Am I using the terms 'incident' and 'problem' correctly when I say that there was an incident on my PC recently (Adobe installed a bad update) that led to the problem that PDFs of docs using certain characters or formatting were malformed.

If so, where does the word 'issue' fit in?

Ken

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StuartR
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Re: problem vs incident vs issue

Post by StuartR »

From an ITIL perspective.
  • An incident is "An unplanned interruption to a service or reduction in the quality of a service", for example you have a malformed document.
  • A problem is "A cause, or potential cause, of one or more incidents"
So your incident was a malformed document.
The problem was a bug in a particular version of Adobe software.
Potential solutions include using different acrobat software, reverting to a previous version of Adobe software, or avoiding using greek sigma characters in your documents.

The term issue is not generally used in IT service management, other than with it's normal English meaning
StuartR


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stuck
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Re: problem vs incident vs issue

Post by stuck »

Thank you Stuart, that helps me.

Ken

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Jay Freedman
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Re: problem vs incident vs issue

Post by Jay Freedman »

From talking with many 'Softies over the years, I believe that the company culture considers "issue" to be the preferred synonym for "problem". Officially, the Microsoft Manual of Style discusses "issue" only as a verb, and says not to use it.

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stuck
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Re: problem vs incident vs issue

Post by stuck »

Thanks Jay.

Ken