If you work in IT, you know things can go south pretty fast. One moment everything’s running smoothly, the next, a critical system goes down, employees can’t access their tools, and suddenly, everyone’s looking at IT to save the day.
But not all IT issues are the same.
Some need an immediate fix, while others need a deeper investigation to stop them from happening again. That’s why some are called incidents and others problems. The solution? Incident and problem management.
Understanding the difference between incidents and problems is key to keeping your IT operations in check. And when you add AI-powered ITSM platforms like Siit into the mix, managing incidents and solving problems becomes a whole lot easier.
Incidents vs. Problems: What’s the Difference?
What is an Incident?
An incident is any unexpected interruption to an IT service that affects productivity. It’s the classic “something’s broken and we need to fix it now” scenario. The goal of incident management is to get things back up and running as quickly as possible—it’s about speed and resolution rather than long-term fixes.
Examples of incidents:
- The company email server goes down
- Employees can’t log in due to an authentication failure
- A critical business app crashes mid-use
The goal of incident management is simple: restore services as quickly as possible so employees can get back to work.
Siit makes incident management effortless by automating ticket triage, routing service requests from employees to the right IT admin, and ensuring priority issues get handled first. And because it integrates with Slack and syncs with Teams, employees can report issues instantly, without leaving their usual workflow.
What is a Problem?
A problem, on the other hand, is the root cause of one or more incidents. Instead of just fixing what’s broken, problem management digs deeper to find out why it broke in the first place and ensures it doesn’t happen again.
Examples of problems:
- A VPN failure keeps happening every Friday due to server overload
- A software bug causes repeated crashes after every system update
- An application runs slowly due to a misconfigured database
While incident management is reactive, problem management is proactive—it focuses on long-term fixes and preventing the same issues from reoccurring. With Siit’s AI-powered analytics and reporting, IT teams can track recurring issues, identify patterns, and resolve root causes before they become major disruptions.
Incident vs. Problem Management: Breaking It Down
Incident and problem management work hand-in-hand, but they serve different purposes. Here’s how they stack up:
- Incident management is about speed. The goal is to get systems back up and running ASAP.
- Problem management is about prevention. Instead of just fixing issues as they come up, problem management looks for long-term solutions.
- Incident resolution is temporary. You fix the immediate issue, but it may happen again.
- Problem resolution is permanent. You find and fix the root cause, so it doesn’t keep happening.
- Incident management is reactive. IT teams respond to issues as they occur.
- Problem management is proactive. IT teams analyze data, spot trends, and implement changes to prevent issues before they happen.
Siit integrates with Notion and Confluence, ensuring that IT teams can document problems, track investigations, and store resolution details for future reference.
How to Master Incident Management
When an incident happens, every second counts. The faster IT teams can diagnose, escalate, and resolve issues, the less downtime and frustration employees experience.
1. Automate Incident Reporting and Triage
Manually logging and sorting incidents wastes time. With Siit’s multi-channel messaging feature, employees can report incidents instantly via Slack, Microsoft Teams, forms, or email, and AI-powered automation categorizes, prioritizes, and routes requests to the right IT admin. No more wasted time figuring out who should handle what—Siit takes care of that automatically.
2. Use AI-Powered Workflows for Faster Resolutions
Siit’s AI-powered workflows speed up resolutions by automating repetitive tasks like password resets, software access approvals, and basic troubleshooting. By integrating with Notion and Confluence, IT teams can also pull up internal documentation directly within service requests, reducing response time even further.
3. Keep Employees in the Loop with Real-Time Updates
Nothing is more frustrating for employees than submitting an incident report and having no idea what’s happening next. Siit provides real-time request status updates, so employees always know where their request stands, what’s being done, and when to expect a fix.
How to Master Problem Management
While incident management is about quick fixes, problem management is about making sure those incidents don’t happen again. Here’s how IT teams can take a proactive approach.
1. Use AI to Identify Recurring Issues
Siit’s Analytics & Reporting feature helps IT teams spot patterns across incidents, making it easier to identify the root cause of recurring problems. If a certain type of request keeps popping up, it’s a sign there’s a deeper issue that needs fixing.
2. Automate Root Cause Analysis with AI
Instead of manually sifting through logs, Siit integrates with Jira Service Management to automatically link related incidents, track investigations, and suggest probable causes based on historical data. IT teams can then prioritize fixing the most impactful problems first.
3. Document Solutions for Future Reference
Once a problem is resolved, IT teams need to document the fix so they don’t have to start from scratch if it happens again. Siit’s knowledge management integrations with Notion and Confluence make it easy to store and share solutions within the organization.
Bringing Incident and Problem Management Together
Incident and problem management should work hand-in-hand. IT teams that connect both processes see fewer recurring issues, improved system reliability, and happier employees. Siit makes this integration seamless by:
- Automatically linking incidents to related problems, so IT teams always have full visibility into underlying issues.
- Tracking root cause investigations and linking problem resolution updates to active incidents.
- Providing AI-powered recommendations for both quick incident fixes and long-term problem resolutions.
By taking a holistic approach to ITSM, IT teams can reduce downtime, increase efficiency, and prevent disruptions before they start.
Final Thoughts
Incident and problem management aren’t just checkboxes on an IT team’s to-do list—they’re the foundation of keeping business operations running smoothly. Mastering both ensures IT teams respond to issues faster, prevent recurring problems, and create a more efficient IT ecosystem.
With Siit’s AI-powered ITSM platform, IT teams can handle incidents with automated triage, AI-driven workflows, and real-time updates, while problem management becomes easier with trend analysis, root cause identification, and seamless documentation integration.
Check out Siit’s features and sign up for a free trial to see how AI-powered automation can transform your IT operations today.
