Different Types Of Disasters

Difference Between Different Disasters

Incident

Focuses on immediate resolution: The priority is to fix this specific crash for the user. This might involve a temporary fix or workaround.

Problem

Focuses on long-term prevention: The goal is to identify and fix the bug in the code to prevent similar crashes from happening again.

Here's an analogy

• Incident: Your car has a flat tire (single event).
• Problem: There's a nail lodged in your tire (underlying cause).

By addressing the incident (fixing the flat tire), you get back on the road. But to prevent future flats (solving the problem), you need to remove the nail.

How to categorize the incident?

• Incident management often leads to problem management: When resolving an incident, keep an eye out for patterns or similar reports. This could indicate a deeper problem.
• Not all incidents become problems: One-time glitches or user errors might not require further investigation through problem management.
• Severity matters: Even a single incident can be critical if it affects core functionalities or a large number of users. This might warrant initiating problem management alongside resolving the immediate incident.

Example

• Incident:
  • Imagine you're developing a delivery app. A user reports their order keeps getting stuck on the "processing" screen and never progresses. This is a single instance affecting one user. (Incident Management)
• Problem:
  • You investigate and discover a bug in the app's communication with the delivery system. This bug might be causing similar issues for other users who haven't reported it yet. (Problem Management)
• When to use both:
  • In this scenario, you'd first focus on incident management to fix the specific user's order. Maybe you can manually push it through the system or provide a voucher for their inconvenience. But then, you'd switch to problem management to identify and fix the communication bug to prevent future occurrences and frustrated users. Here's another example:
  • Incident:
    • A social media app experiences a sudden surge in users trying to post at the same time. This causes the app to crash for many users. (Incident Management)
  • Problem:
    • The app's server infrastructure might not be able to handle the high volume of traffic. This could be a recurring issue during peak usage times. (Problem Management)