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I am new to ITIL and Incident classifcations and I am trying learn more about them and understand how they could integrate in our organization. I have found it difficult to find a clear definition of Fault vs. Service Request vs. Technical incidents. I am basing my definitions on this article:

http://www.itsmsolutions.com/newsletters/DITYvol6iss27.htm

As I understand it:

Service Request - Service provided by IT as part of regular administration of a system.

Fault - An unexpected error in a system.

Technical Incident - An interruption or potential interruption in IT service due to an expected incident caused by some IT policy.

So, per those definitions how would this incident be classified:

IT Security policy requires passwords to be changed every 90 days. If a user fails to do so within 90 days and leaves the network and needs to work remotely they are then locked out of their machine due to the password being expired.

Is this a technical incident due to our IT Security polices?

HopelessN00b
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ExceptionLimeCat
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  • What's your question? –  Oct 21 '13 at 23:57
  • I am attempting a proof of concept to prove the need for help from a professional. I am sorry if this was the incorrect site. Does Stack Exchange have a site to facilitate these sort of discussions? – ExceptionLimeCat Oct 22 '13 at 16:57

1 Answers1

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Service Request - a request for a service provided by external party. Part of normal operating procedure. Stuff like a password reset, creating a user account etc. Nothing specific, nothing unplanned.

Fault - technical failure.

Technical Incident - something happened that may not be a fault YET. Disc over threshhold does not mean you can not write more data - just that you are dangerously close to do that. Toner Low does not mean a printer does not work, just that you basically replace the toner or send a new package there for the moment it fails.

The core with a technical indicent is that it is not a fault - it is not a failure to deliver service, and not a service request - i.e. a humanly triggered external request. It is a procedure that is triggered.

Your mistake with technical incident is assuming those are necessarily interruptions. They may not be. They are caused by some automated workflows / policy mostly, but do not necessarily constitute errors. Techncial incidents can be proactive, before a fault (toner low is not yet a fault from the printer to print).

TomTom
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  • Those definitions make sense to me but why is a password reset a Service and not a Fault or Technical Incident? If an account is locked after a certain amount of time doesn't that make it a technical incident since it was per an IT policy? Or if the user inputs incorrect input, isn't that a user Fault? – ExceptionLimeCat Oct 21 '13 at 20:37
  • Because a user locking an account is not a technical problem per se - you can not fix a problem in front of the keyboard. Faults are there as classification to track failures of the infrastructure - a smart user mistyping the keyword multiple times is not a technical failure. You likely have a subclassification then under service request for those "end user security indecents" ;) You reserver faults for cases your stuff fails, technically. Not sure I ever had a user with an asset number tatoo that was part of my hardware ;) – TomTom Oct 21 '13 at 21:12
  • I agree per the bad user input scenario. I will update my question per the scenario i am unclear about. – ExceptionLimeCat Oct 22 '13 at 14:29