Incident problem management and blameless postmortems are essential practices that help IT and DevOps teams restore services quickly, identify root causes, and continuously improve system reliability.
Duration 3 Days – 21 hrs.
Overview
The Incident, Problem Management and Blameless Postmortems Training Course is a practical, hands-on program designed to help IT operations, service management, DevOps, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), and technical support teams effectively manage service disruptions, identify root causes, and foster a culture of continuous improvement. Based on industry best practices aligned with ITIL®, SRE, and modern operational excellence principles, the course provides participants with the knowledge and skills to respond to incidents efficiently, conduct structured problem investigations, and perform blameless postmortems that improve system reliability and organizational learning.
Participants will learn the complete incident lifecycle, incident prioritization, major incident management, root cause analysis techniques, communication during outages, problem management processes, knowledge management, corrective and preventive actions, and post-incident review methodologies. Through interactive workshops, realistic simulations, and case studies, participants will gain practical experience in reducing downtime, improving service quality, and building resilient IT operations.
Objectives
- Understand the principles of Incident Management and Problem Management.
- Differentiate incidents, problems, known errors, and changes.
- Apply ITIL-aligned incident and problem management processes.
- Prioritize and classify incidents using business impact and urgency.
- Coordinate and manage major incidents effectively.
- Apply structured Root Cause Analysis (RCA) techniques.
- Conduct blameless postmortems that encourage learning and accountability.
- Develop corrective and preventive action plans.
- Improve service reliability through continuous improvement.
- Measure and report operational performance using key service management metrics.
Target Audience
- IT Service Desk Analysts
- IT Support Engineers
- Incident Managers
- Problem Managers
- Site Reliability Engineers (SREs)
- DevOps Engineers
- Infrastructure Engineers
- Application Support Teams
- Operations Managers
- IT Managers
- Technical Team Leads
- Service Delivery Managers
Prerequisites
- Basic understanding of IT service management concepts
- Familiarity with enterprise IT infrastructure or applications
- Experience working in IT operations, technical support, or software delivery is recommended
- No prior experience with ITIL or SRE is required
Course Outline
Day 1 – Incident Management Fundamentals
Module 1: Introduction to IT Service Management
- IT service management principles
- ITIL Incident Management overview
- Service lifecycle concepts
- Operational excellence
- Business impact of service disruptions
Module 2: Incident Management Process
- Incident lifecycle
- Incident logging
- Categorization
- Prioritization
- Impact and urgency assessment
- Escalation procedures
Module 3: Major Incident Management
- Major incident criteria
- Incident command structure
- Roles and responsibilities
- War room coordination
- Stakeholder communication
- Status reporting
Module 4: Incident Communication
- Internal communication
- Executive updates
- Customer notifications
- Communication templates
- Documentation standards
Hands-on Lab
- Incident logging and prioritization
- Major incident simulation
- Stakeholder communication exercise
- Incident lifecycle documentation
Day 2 – Problem Management and Root Cause Analysis
Module 1: Problem Management Fundamentals
- Problem Management objectives
- Reactive vs proactive problem management
- Known Error Database (KEDB)
- Workarounds
- Permanent solutions
Module 2: Root Cause Analysis (RCA)
- Root cause investigation process
- 5 Whys technique
- Fishbone (Ishikawa) diagrams
- Fault Tree Analysis
- Pareto Analysis
- Timeline reconstruction
Module 3: Corrective and Preventive Actions
- Corrective Action Plans (CAP)
- Preventive Action Plans (PAP)
- Risk mitigation
- Validation of solutions
- Continuous improvement
Module 4: Knowledge Management
- Knowledge capture
- Incident documentation
- Runbooks
- Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)
- Lessons learned repository
Hands-on Lab
- Perform root cause analysis
- Develop corrective actions
- Create a Known Error record
- Produce operational documentation
Day 3 – Blameless Postmortems and Operational Excellence
Module 1: Blameless Culture
- Psychological safety
- Accountability versus blame
- Learning organizations
- Human factors in incidents
- Building a culture of continuous improvement
Module 2: Conducting Blameless Postmortems
- Postmortem objectives
- Facilitating postmortem meetings
- Timeline development
- Contributing factors
- Action item tracking
- Executive reporting
Module 3: Metrics and Service Improvement
- Mean Time to Detect (MTTD)
- Mean Time to Acknowledge (MTTA)
- Mean Time to Resolve (MTTR)
- Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF)
- Service availability
- Trend analysis
- Operational KPIs
Module 4: Integrating Incident, Problem, and Change Management
- Relationship between Incident, Problem, and Change Management
- Continuous Service Improvement (CSI)
- Automation opportunities
- Governance and compliance
- Operational maturity models
Module 5: Capstone Exercise
- End-to-end incident simulation
- Major incident response
- Root cause investigation
- Blameless postmortem workshop
- Improvement roadmap presentation
Hands-on Lab
- Facilitate a blameless postmortem
- Create an RCA report
- Develop corrective and preventive action plans
- Build a service improvement plan
- Final practical assessment
