major Incident Management overview in the service operations workspace for itsm Effective major Incident Management is crucial to resolving critical issues minimizing downtime and maintaining business continuity a major incident is a high priority incident that significantly impacts business operations affecting many users or critical Services it requires immediate attention and resolution due to its urgency and potential business impact let's say there's a widespread service outage to restore the outage and other services quickly we can use predefined roles and business requirements to facilitate quick identification effective communication coordination among stakeholders and a structured resolution approach defining clear escalation paths and tracking is crucial and service operations workspace actively facilitates the management of all incidents managing incidents includes defining whether it is a regular incident or major incident unlike regular incidents major incidents have a broader impact affecting critical business functions and a larger user base they are prioritized higher and involve a more structured and Urgent Response to mitigate disruptions that require cross-functional coordination for contingency plans let's compare them a regular incident is an unplanned Interruption to IT service that may impact a single or few users a major incident is an unplanned Interruption to it service that causes significant disruption to business and organization affecting a large number of users a regular incident can be resolved as per priority and SLA a major incident must be resolved as soon as possible and requires a quick resolution process or a regular incident can be managed by all assigned it users a major incident needs to be managed by a major incident manager now let's look at the major incident process used by it operations teams in service operations workspace the major incident process includes five phases phase one identification and proposal an agent can propose an incident as a major incident based on its impact and urgency this involves assessing the incident's potential impact on business operations and user base once proposed major incident manager comes and promotes the major incident candidate to a major incident phase two communication and collaboration a major incident manager uses communication tools like email and messaging to inform stakeholders and coordinate the resolution efforts effective communication is vital to keep all relevant parties informed and aligned phase three resolution a major incident manager resolves the major incident by following a structured approach updating resolution codes and notes and closing the incident the goal is to restore normal service operation as quickly as possible while minimizing adverse impact on business operations phase four problem record creation create a problem record for the root cause analysis of the major incident a major incident manager can configure major incident flow to automatically create a problem record and copy information from the major incident to the new problem record phase five post incident review a major incident manager will prepare a report for the stakeholders to analyze to do this they'll edit the summary and Report settings then preview download export and share once this has been done the major incident manager will Mark the report as published reviewing this report helps in identifying root causes and enhancing future incident management practices now that we've covered the major incident process let's peek at the major incident Playbook which complements each phase's execution the major incident manager can use the Playbook to review the situation to understand the incident's impact followed by promoting the incident if it meets the criteria for a major incident communication tools are then used to keep stakeholders informed while collaboration Fe features help coordinate efforts across teams The Playbook also guides you through the resolution process ensuring all steps are documented finally The Playbook creates a PO incident report to capture the incident details and Lessons Learned enhancing future incident management practices the service operations workspace and the Playbook workflow help in managing incidents more effectively with the goal of minimizing operational disruptions when a major incident occurs to learn more see our product documentation or knowledge base or ask a question in the service now community