Having KPIs for incident management today could be the difference between a thriving business and lost revenue.
When companies are able to quickly react and resolve issues as they arise, their system becomes more reliable and has the trust of its users. However, many of us have also experienced first-hand what can happen when incidents are not managed quickly or effectively, which is why today we are going to learn about some indicators that we should follow to try to avoid any risk that may affect our bussines.
What are KPIs for incident management?
KPIs , or “key performance indicators,” are various data points that teams use to monitor the performance of their systems and people . Companies track these different indicators to help determine if they are meeting goals and deadlines.
Tracking KPIs for incident management can help identify and diagnose problems with processes and systems , establish realistic benchmarks and objectives for the team to work towards, and provide a starting point for broader issues.
Importance of KPIs in incident management
The goal of incident management is to detect and resolve incidents as early as possible to minimize the impact on end users.
Knowing which KPIs are most relevant to the success of your products and systems will help you maintain optimal functionality over time, creating more efficient incident management processes with greater automation and learning.
Monitoring the right KPIs at the right time can highlight specific trends or weaknesses within your system, so you can prevent larger outages from occurring in the future.
Examples of KPIs for incident management
To correctly monitor incident management, you can use the monitoring of these indicators:
1. Incidents in a period of time
What it means: The average number of incidents over a given time period (for example, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually).
This KPI can help you reveal any trends regarding high or low frequency of incidents. If this number starts to increase or stays higher than usual, teams can start investigating to find out why this is happening.
2. Average recognition time
It is the average amount of time between a system alert and the time it takes for a team member to recognize the problem.
These types of incident management KPIs can show how quickly and effectively your team addresses and responds to new system alerts.
3. Average resolution time
It is the average time it takes to respond or resolve an incident. This is another KPI for advocacy that can show you how quickly your team is able to respond or resolve issues as they arise.
4. Average incident response time
This KPI can help you measure the amount of time it takes for an incident to be delegated to the correct team member.
Tracking these kinds of incident management KPIs can show how quickly your team is able to get the right team member to work on a given incident.
Working to reduce response time can dramatically speed up resolution.
5. First contact resolution rate
This KPI measures the incident resolution rate during the first incident without repeat alerts.
This indicator will help you show the effectiveness of your incident management system over time. A high first contact resolution rate is a sign of a mature, well-configured system.
6. Guard time
It is the amount of time a given employee or contractor spends on call. Tracking this incident KPI can help you make adjustments to your guard rotation to prevent employees from becoming burned out or overloaded.
7. Service Legal Agreement (SLA)
The service level agreement outlines an agreement between you (the provider) and your customers regarding metrics such as uptime and/or responsiveness. The SLA should be constantly monitored and updated to accurately reflect the current state of your service.
8. Cost per ticket
This type of KPIs for incident management measures the calculated cost of resolving an incident. Knowing how much it costs to resolve an issue can help determine which methods are most effective in terms of time and money invested.
9. Activity time
It is the percentage of time that your systems work correctly. Show the degree of reliability of your service. The closer you get to 100%, the happier your customers will be. Although perfection is almost impossible, the goal should always be to keep this number as high as possible.
Conclusion
It is important to consider the performance of your system and the effectiveness of your incident management to maintain the reliability of your service or product. Tracking and monitoring your team’s performance through metrics and KPIs can help highlight any issues and weaknesses to continually improve incident management maturity and avoid unplanned outages and downtime.