Reducing MTTR: 8 strategies to get it done quickly

Eight ways to reduce your mean time to resolution
Reduce your MTTR with Virima

IT organizations are facing a difficult challenge: improving productivity and efficiency as they become leaner and more distributed. One metric that can help IT improve is MTTR—mean time to resolution. In short, the time it takes to resolve a problem.

MTTR seems like a single metric but it refers to four different metrics. The “R” can refer to aspects like:

Repair: Average time it takes to fix the root cause of the incident
Recovery: Average time it takes to recover from an incident
Respond: Average time it takes to respond to an incident
Resolve: Average time it takes to resolve an incident fully

The lower your MTTR, the more efficient your incident management processes are. To achieve this, IT managers are always looking for ways to reduce the MTTR for their IT response teams. The State of the SRE report found that 67% of site reliability engineers (SRE) spent most of their week reducing their MTTR.

One way to do this is using a tool that offers capabilities like IT discovery, configuration management database (CMDB), and service mapping. These technologies can save time by automatically collecting data about your IT environment, so you do not have to waste time manually sifting through logs.

This article will discuss eight ways these tools can help you shorten your MTTR and get your team back up and running faster.

Eight ways to reduce your mean time to resolution

Here are eight ways to reduce your MTTR using robust IT management systems:

1. Define what your IT systems and services are using IT discovery software

IT discovery software helps IT managers quickly identify assets, services, and applications across their network. Also, it helps them build a comprehensive inventory of their IT environment that you can use for troubleshooting and service mapping.

It is the perfect solution for breaking down IT complexities and getting the complete picture of your systems and services. This critical piece of technology gives IT teams a detailed breakdown of the distinct elements behind their network, ranging from cloud applications to IoT resources, from websites to server clusters.

It gives incredible insight into dependencies, connectivity and reliability of a system. This up-to-date information expedites the resolution process. They can be quickly identified and fixed when issues arise without unnecessary delays. When managing fast-paced networks with multiple connections, having an accurate representation at your fingertips is essential.

Tools like Virima have features like IT Discovery software that helps you scan your network continuously to detect what assets exist and which services are linked. It results in an accurate inventory of your assets, enabling you to identify the root cause quickly.

2. Use a CMDB to map out all the dependencies between different systems and services

Implementing an effective CMDB can be a powerful way to reduce the time to resolve MTTR. By utilizing this tool, teams can map out all the dependencies between different systems and services to better understand their internal environments.

It allows them to quickly identify which components could cause issues in their workflow, allowing faster and more efficient resolution. In turn, MTTR is drastically reduced, and organizations can spend less time fixing critical errors, allowing more time for developing products and initiatives that move the business forward.

You can use Virima’s CMDB to achieve this. Its CMDB stands out from the competition as it automates data collection and ensures that all information is accurate and up-to-date. It eliminates the manual effort of maintaining the CMDB and saves IT professionals time, allowing them to focus on solving problems.

With Virima, IT managers can easily construct relations between related configurations, providing a complete view of assets, users, locations, and other variables. This capability enables IT staff to identify problems faster than ever before, drastically reducing MTTR by providing an in-depth analysis of how different components interact.

As it acts as a single source of truth, it makes it easy for administrators to access real-time updates about their environment at any given moment. In this way, Virima’s CMDB gives IT managers the power to make smart decisions quickly and confidently, ultimately enabling them to reduce their MTTR significantly.

3. Use a service map to identify which areas of the system are causing problems

Service mapping tools use data from the IT discovery process to map relationships between systems, applications, and services. Visualizing these relationships in an easy-to-understand way makes it easier for teams to pinpoint where problems may occur. It makes it much easier to diagnose issues than relying on manual processes or guesswork.

IT teams can quickly identify which areas of the system require attention. With MTTR being an important goal for many IT departments, this technology can be invaluable in helping to diagnose and resolve issues swiftly.

For instance, Virima’s service mapping feature allows you to map any service and visualize those relationships in real-time. It populates these maps using data from discovery scans and the CMDB using DevOps-style topology views. Using these dynamic maps, you can pinpoint open incidents and identify the root cause in no time too.

An image of Virima’s service mapping tool that helps you map your services and pinpoint incidents in real time

4. Create a comprehensive incident-management action plan

An effective plan should prioritize incidents, include clear steps for incident response, involve the right personnel, and incorporate processes for IT Discovery, CMDB, and Service Mapping software. Utilizing these tools can provide immense help when streamlining the MTTR process. A robust incident-management action plan in place is a great starting point for your organization’s MTTR goals.

Having up-to-date information is essential to managing your network and effectively keeping MTTR minimal. It can be instrumental in accurately representing your systems and services, giving teams insight into the dependencies between components and how they interact. With this understanding, any issues can be quickly identified and resolved without unnecessary delays.

The typical incident management process

Source

In the image above, Virima’s software would be the most useful in the Identification and Closure stage. For instance, the service maps give insight into where the incident occurred and which systems have been affected. In the Closure stage, you can verify if unknown assets have been removed from the network (cybersecurity threats) and use the service maps to determine if the issue is resolved.

5. Use automation capabilities to detect, diagnose, and resolve incidents faster

Automation can help reduce MTTR by supporting automated incident detection, diagnosis, and resolution. By combining the power of automation with traditional IT operations processes, it quickly alerts IT teams to outages and supports rapid root cause analysis.

In addition, by using IT management software to track resource changes, you can continuously audit your environment for fast and reliable MTTR results. With such capabilities driving MTTR performance within your IT team, you will be able to achieve desired business outcomes faster than ever before.

Plus, by leveraging IT management software, IT teams can create a streamlined process for resolving incidents quickly. For example, service maps show you exactly what is going on in your network—significantly reducing the time to resolution (MTTR) for incident management teams. It removes the need for manual sorting through multiple incident logs.

With a clear incident-management action plan and regular monitoring of performance results, IT teams will have the tools they need to reduce MTTR and keep their networks running efficiently.

6. Make it easy for IT teams to log tickets

A fast ticket logging and resolution system for IT teams ensures that organizations run smoothly and remain competitive. By utilizing tools like Virima, IT teams can gain valuable insight into MTTR (mean time to resolution), allowing them to work more efficiently by cutting down the time it takes to log tickets and resolve them. With the right cross-team collaboration, logging tickets can be automated and simplified so that when trouble arises, IT teams can use these resources to jump on the problem, saving time and money immediately.

In addition, by leveraging logging and collaboration tools such as ticketing databases and cloud-based solutions, IT teams can quickly track the progress of their tickets, enabling fast resolution.

Virima integrates with service desk solutions like Ivanti and ServiceNow, helping you streamline the entire incident management process. It speeds up the process from start to finish and ensures that any potential service issues are resolved as soon as possible.

7. Leverage your knowledge base and empower IT teams

IT teams know how critical MTTR is to service success and can significantly impact customer satisfaction. Leveraging your organizational knowledge base can go a long way toward helping them reduce MTTR.

An extensive knowledge base allows teams to pinpoint and address an issue’s root cause quickly. These tools provide them with quick access to up-to-date information about service relationships, network components, and more. So teams can confidently identify the exact issue in less time.

By leveraging the knowledge base, organizations can help empower their support staff to be more effective—giving customers better overall service and satisfaction levels. It promotes better cross-team communication, faster incident resolution, and improved service performance.

8. Create tight processes for change management

Change management is one of the least thought-of routes to reduce MTTR when responding to IT incidents. For this method to work, it’s important to create tight processes and protocols. Implementing IT management software ensures these processes are in place and easy to follow. These strategies can help you save on MTTR when dealing with everyday IT issues, keeping your organization running smoothly and efficiently.

You can monitor your live environment and see how often services are disrupted whenever you make changes in the backend. Based on that, refine your change management process to tighten deployment and avoid unnecessary crashes.

With a streamlined process for resolving incidents, tight change management protocols, and clear performance monitoring results, IT teams can keep their networks running efficiently—and ensure that customer satisfaction levels remain high.

Reduce your MTTR with Virima

By proactively monitoring for problems, and equipping IT teams with the resources needed to manage incidents, organizations can expect a higher level of operational readiness and uptime. Ultimately, through understanding, leveraging, and optimizing IT management, IT teams can efficiently reduce their MTTR.

To truly capitalize on these benefits and reach your MTTR goals, it is essential that you use the right tools for the job. Virima’s intuitive tool helps companies automate the discovery of ever-changing dependencies within their dynamic systems.

With a product suite that integrates key features like IT discovery, CMDB, and service mapping in one interface, you can manage your entire infrastructure in one place using automation capabilities. It helps you focus on resolving the incident instead of the manual processes that come with it. It quickly assesses configuration drift and eliminates unnecessary time spent manually searching for an incident’s root cause. Are you interested in reducing your MTTR? Book a demo with Virima now, and we will show you how our product suite can help you significantly reduce it.