Problem Management use case

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Problem Management use case

    Problem Management in ServiceNow is designed to prevent problems and reduce the occurrence of related incidents. It focuses on eliminating recurring incidents and minimizing the impact of incidents that cannot be entirely prevented. By capturing detailed information on affected configuration items (CIs) classified as assets, Problem Management helps track updates, repairs, swaps, or retirement of assets. This systematic approach enables customers to monitor asset location, usage, and changes over time, enhancing the management of IT infrastructure.

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    When a CI causes a problem, the dependency view allows identification of other CIs affected by this relationship, helping to understand the broader impact of the problem.

    Key Features

    • The Configuration Management Database (CMDB), aligned with the Common Service Data Model (CSDM) framework, adds significant value by enabling:
      • Clear understanding of how problems impact services and service offerings.
      • Dynamic routing of problems based on impacted services.
      • Identification of impacted services for targeted problem resolution.
    • Key CSDM data elements used in Problem Management include:
      • Subscription: Lists related to service offerings that define who accesses a service and who might be impacted by outages. These include subscriptions by company, department, group, location, and user.
      • Business service offerings: Used to determine business approvers based on approval groups and business criticality, recognizing that services may have multiple offerings with varying criticalities.
      • Technical service offerings: Help identify technical approvers and assignment groups responsible for resolution.
      • Service instances: Differentiate between production and non-production environments (such as DEV, QA, UAT), allowing filtering of non-production environments if desired.
    • Note that the environment attribute should be used instead of the legacy usedfor attribute for environment identification.

    Key Outcomes

    Using the CSDM framework with Problem Management empowers customers to gain context on which CIs are involved in problems and better determine impact and root cause through the following actions:

    • Populate the Configuration Item field on the Problem form with the CI or service affected.
    • Optionally use the Service and Service Offering fields to narrow down CI selections (this requires additional configuration beyond the base system).
    • Use the Affected CI related list to identify other CIs that may be contributing to the problem.

    Overall, this use case helps ServiceNow customers systematically manage problems by linking them to impacted assets and services, enabling more informed decision-making, faster root cause analysis, and minimized business disruption.

    The Problem Management use case is described in this section.

    Problem Management is used to prevent problems and the occurrence of resulting incidents. It also aims at eliminating recurring incidents and minimizing the impact of incidents that cannot be prevented. With Problem Management, you can capture information on affected configuration items (CIs), with type as asset, in a problem to keep a record of the updated, repaired, swapped, or retired configuration items. By keeping track of the assets, you can identify the location of the assets, their usage and when the assets were changed. Using Problem Management, you to monitor and manage the assets in your company using a systematic approach.

    If a configuration item (CI) has resulted in a problem, use the dependency view to identify other configuration items (CIs) affected by the CI that caused the problem. You can then associate affected configuration items (CIs) with a problem record to find out how the problem affects other CIs with dependent relationships.

    Key features of the Problem Management use case

    The CMDB, when used by the CSDM framework, provides value to Problem Management in the following ways:
    • Understand the impact of the problem on services and service offerings.​
    • Dynamically route problems.
    • Identify one or more impacted services to address the problem.​

    CSDM data elements available for use by Problem Management.

    The CSDM data elements used in Problem Management are:

    1. Subscription: Related lists on service offerings that identify who has access to the offering and thus might be impacted in an outage. A problem can identify impact using the subscribed by tables. The related lists are as follows:
      • Service Subscriptions by Company [service_subscribe_company]
      • Service Subscriptions by Department [service_subscribe_department]
      • Service Subscriptions by Group [service_subscribe_sys_user_grp]
      • Service Subscriptions by Location [service_subscribe_location]
      • Service Subscriptions by User [service_subscribe_sys_user]
    2. Business service offering might be used by problems to provide the business approver based on approval_group and business_criticality. A business service may have multiple offerings, each with a different criticality.
    3. Technical service offerings might be used by problems to provide the technical approver approval_group and technical assignment group on the attribute assignment_group.
    4. Service instance may be used to provide prod and non-prod (DEV, QA, UAT, and so on) environments. Non-prod environments may be filtered out if desired. The legacy used_for attribute maps to the environment attribute. You should use the environment attribute.
      Note:
      Some service offerings may identify the environment of the offering as well.

    Results of the Problem Management use case

    The CSDM framework provides Problem Management context for problems on what CIs may be involved.

    To determine the impact and root cause, compete the following steps:
    1. Populate the Configuration Item attribute on the Problem form, configuration_item, with the CI item or service affected.
    2. (Optional) Use the Service and Service Offering attributes on the Problem form to help narrow down the list of configuration items to choose from. This feature is not available with the base system and needs additional configuration.
    3. (Optional) Use the Affected CI related list to identify the CIs that may have caused the problem.