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Commonly confused · Business Platforms & EA

Incident vs Problem vs Change in ITIL: What's the Difference?

In ITIL 4 an incident is an unplanned interruption or reduction in quality of a service, and incident management restores service quickly. A problem is the underlying cause of one or more incidents, and a change is the addition, modification, or removal of anything that could affect services, often used to permanently fix a problem.

Incident

vs

Problem

vs

Change

IncidentProblemChange
DefinitionUnplanned interruption or degradationCause, or potential cause, of incidentsModification to something that could affect services
GoalRestore service as quickly as possibleFind and eliminate root causeMaximize successful changes while managing risk
TimingReactive, urgentReactive or proactivePlanned
Key outputsResolved ticket, workaroundRoot cause, known error, workaroundAuthorized and implemented change
ITIL 4 practiceIncident managementProblem managementChange enablement
ServiceNow tableincidentproblemchange_request
Remember it

Incident: fix it now. Problem: find out why. Change: fix it for good, safely.

Exam tip

Restoring service with a workaround is incident management even if the root cause is unknown. Identifying root cause is problem management, and the fix usually requires a change.

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