Who is an Incident Manager? Skills, Salary & Responsibilities

As an ITIL certification training instructor with over 10 years of experience, I often get asked, "What is an incident manager?" In my view, incident management is essential to IT service management and ITIL in any company, where incident managers monitor events throughout their lifespan.

As an ITIL and incident management expert, I have witnessed how skilled incident managers assist teams in detecting, assessing, and resolving IT events that impact infrastructure and applications. In my experience, exceptional incident managers effectively communicate, coordinate, and resolve issues promptly, ensuring the uninterrupted operation of companies during outages.

Who is an Incident Manager?

What is an incident manager, and what are their duties? They must handle occurrences throughout their lifespan. My experience working with incident managers shows that they act as significant intermediates between stakeholders and lead the team in incident identification, investigation, and resolution.

To minimize inconvenience during outages and difficulties, incident managers coordinate, communicate, and restore service quickly. They regularly monitor incident symptoms, priority, status, and actions. Incident managers are good communicators who organize team reaction activities and inform stakeholders.

They restore services quickly using ITIL procedures. Incident managers are known for their leadership, decision-making, and awareness of IT infrastructure and business requirements. Their monitoring minimizes production interruptions from issues and outages.

Types of Incident Manager

I've managed all types of incidents in my 7 years as an incident manager. According to my experience, incident managers address three basic categories of incidents

1. Major Incidents

If you are wondering what an incident manager is and what its primary type is, then Major Incident always tops the list. Significant Incidents are urgent, high-impact issues that affect the entire organization and business-critical services. Drawing on my experience as an incident management expert, I have directed numerous significant incident response initiatives. Handling major Incidents is a crucial aspect of what does an incident manager do, which involves leading the diagnosis, investigation, and resolution of incidents to restore services promptly and minimize disruption.

2. Repetitive Incidents

Second in precisely knowing who is an Incident Manager, Password resets and other recurring problems can be sources of irritation for end users. Recent case studies indicate that the implementation of knowledge bases and automation can effectively mitigate these incidents.

3. Complex Incidents

Advanced problems involving numerous components and ambiguous origins can be effectively resolved by leveraging IT service management training. For example, a complex incident that I oversaw originated from network latency before it was determined that the cause was a configuration error in the database.

What Does an Incident Manager Do?

To understand this critical incident manager role description, let's outline the key incident manager responsibilities.

• Overseeing the Incident Management Process: Incident managers oversee the entire incident management process and coordinate the incident resolution teams.
• Responding to Service Incidents: Incident managers look into and find reasons before responding to issues. When an email server failed, incident management contacted the response team, who found a hardware issue.
• Prioritizing Incidents: Incident managers leverage their expertise to prioritize incidents based on their business impact. For instance, during a severe network disruption adversely affecting sales, password resets were deprioritized to address the more critical issue.
• Producing Incident Protocols: Incident managers devise comprehensive protocols delineating sequential procedures for responding to incidents, encompassing critical hardware malfunctions or cyber-attacks.

Characteristics of an Effective Incident Manager

Certain traits set incident managers apart. Here are the top characteristics to excel in the role of incident manager in ITIL:

• Eye for Detail: Effective incident managers meticulously follow processes and ensure adherence to policies, standards, and service level agreements.
• Calm Under Pressure: They maintain composure during significant incidents to instill confidence in teams and stakeholders.
• Methodical Mind: Incident managers systematically triage, investigate, and resolve incidents through root cause analysis.
• Good Communicator: Strong communication skills enable incident managers to coordinate smooth team responses and provide transparent updates.
• Problem Solver: Leveraging analytical abilities, they swiftly understand incident scenarios and derive solutions.
• Analytical Skills: Incident managers possess the analytical skills to unpack complex, ambiguous issues and find actionable insights.

Qualifications and Required Skills

To know more about what is an incident manager, here are the minimum qualifications and must-have incident manager skills to become an incident manager:

• Education: A bachelor's degree in IT or a related field is typically required.
• Experience: Proven incident management experience is critical, usually requiring 2+ years.
• Incident Management Knowledge: Extensive knowledge of incident management processes, systems, and tools is mandatory.
• Communication Skills: Excellent analytical and decisive problem-solving skills are necessary.
• Problem-solving Skills: Excellent analytical and decisive problem-solving abilities are required.
• Organizational Skills: Incident managers effortlessly handle multiple tasks and priorities.
• Continuous Improvement: Priorities include constant development and client satisfaction.

Education, Training, and Certifications

Knowing who is an Incident Manager, proper preparation is crucial for incident managers, involving the acquisition of essential education, training, and certifications.

1. Education: A bachelor's degree in IT or a related discipline is a fundamental requirement, providing essential expertise.

2. Training: Gain hands-on experience in IT service management or similar roles to build critical incident response skills. On-the-job training is invaluable for practical knowledge and skill development.

3. Certifications:

• ITIL certificates demonstrate best practices for IT service management.
• KnowledgeHut's comprehensive ITIL 4 Foundation Certification training prepares candidates for exams. It includes:
• Instructor-led sessions,
• Self-paced learning,
• Simulations,
• Mock examinations, and more.
• Earning these credentials validates understanding of frameworks like incident management.

4. Cost: The ₹27,999 Instructor-Led Training package comprises:

• 16 hours of instruction
• Lifetime access to on-demand courseware
• 5 simulation exams
• 8 mock tests
• 8 assessments
• Exam fee
• PeopleCert training material.

The Self-Paced Learning package, costing ₹27,699, includes:

• 49+ hours of on-demand learning
• Lifetime access to courseware
• 5 simulation exams
• 8 mock tests
• 8 assessments
• Exam fee
• PeopleCert training material.

Incident Manager Careers

Pursuing a career as an incident manager can be highly rewarding. Let's explore incident manager job prospects, growth, and typical career paths and progression.

Job Titles	Responsibilities	Avg. Salary
Incident Manager	Managing incident management and team members. Prioritizing incidents by immediacy and business impact.	₹6,96,980
Tech Lead	The tech lead handles incident response technicalities.	₹15,85,840
Communications Manager	All incident communication is managed by the communications manager.	₹3,95,747
Customer Support Advisor	The customer support lead handles all incident-related client issues.	₹2,54,144

Source: Indeed

Incident Manager Salary and Job Growth

Having a better understanding of what an Incident Manager is, let's examine the earning potential and job growth projections for Incident Managers.

1. India

Let's examine Incident Manager salary and job growth projections specifically for India.

Companies	Salary
Ericsson-Worldwide	INR 11,72,476
2COMS Consulting Pvt Ltd	INR 9,51,038
Kyndryl	INR 7,77,330
Capgemini	INR 7,66,114
HCLTech	INR 7,22,069
Six Sigma	INR 7,20,430
DXC Technology	INR 6,49,855
IBM	INR 6,14,055
Wipro	INR 6,06,791

Source: Indeed

2. USA

Shifting focus to the United States, here is an overview of Incident Manager salary and job outlook.

Companies	Salary
Centene	$151,015
MANDIANT	$142,727
MindPoint Group, LLC	$140,000
Cox Automotive	$124,532
Perspecta	$123,269
CIG	$108,998
PwC Canada	$94,380
ServiceNow	$91,981
JP Morgan Chase & Co	$91,889

Source: Indeed

3. UK

For those interested in the UK, this section covers Incident Manager salary and job prospects.

Companies	Salary
Thames Water Utilities Limited	£45,981
Totaljobs Group	£45,814
NHS	£43,512
HM Revenue & Customs	£41,001
Sanctuary	£40,280
Environment Agency	£35,441
UK Civil Service	£35,369
Ministry of Justice UK	£34,817
Reed Talent Solutions	£24,926
Morgan Stanley	£81,003

Source: uk.indeed.com

4. Australia

Now, let's look at the salary range and job growth for Incident Managers in Australia.

Companies	Salary
Transport for NSW	$141,788
ACT Government	$136,872
Datacom Connect	$128,368
Department Of Health	$126,341
Calvary	$116,325
Datacom	$109,374
Department of Fire and Emergency Services	$108,785
City of Gold Coast	$86,411

Source: au.indeed.com

5. Singapore

Finally, we'll explore the Incident Manager's earning potential and job opportunities in Singapore.

Companies	Salary
United Overseas Bank	$176,346
BNY Mellon	$162,567
TikTok	$159,947
JP Morgan Chase & Co	$143,888
DBS Bank	$120,806
PERSOLKELLY	$106,116
Helius Technologies	$93,251
A-IT Software Services Pte Ltd	$90,862
ITCAN Pte Ltd	$88,089
Nityo Infotech	$81,248

Source: sg.indeed.com

Job Satisfaction

If you are wondering what is an Incident Manager and what drives them then incident managers find tremendous professional satisfaction in efficiently diagnosing and rectifying intricate IT challenges. They derive fulfillment from spearheading coordinated responses that effectively reinstate vital services while minimizing the impact on business operations.

Satisfaction for incident managers stems from the difficulties associated with analyzing ambiguous issues, the autonomy to execute resolute measures in times of crisis, and the opportunity to ingeniously enhance incident management procedures.

How to Become an Incident Manager?

Formal schooling, IT service management experience, and approved certifications may help incident managers develop a wide range of abilities. Here are the essential things to under what is an Incident Manager:

• Earn a Degree: This role requires a bachelor's or master's degree in computer science, information technology, or a related discipline.
• Gain Professional Experience: After graduation, apply for entry-level IT service management positions to acquire practical experience supporting incident response processes. These roles help develop the competencies necessary to assume the incident manager job responsibilities.
• Obtain Certification: Certifications such as ITIL and CREST attest to an individual's proficiency as an incident manager. Possessing these credentials signifies expertise in the most effective methods of incident management aimed at reducing disruptions.

Challenges that Incident Managers Face

To have a better understanding of what is Incident Marketing, we'll now look at the top challenges and potential solutions:

• Organizational Complexity: The first thing to understand is knowing more about what is an Incident Manager knowing. As companies grow, their procedures and systems get more complicated. This complexity may complicate event investigation and diagnosis. Incident managers should promote rigorous and deliberate ITIL deployments to overcome this problem.
• People Management: Coordination between teams is crucial for event response. Some team members may reject incident management procedure changes. Communication and education are essential to buy-in. Staff involvement in process design and improvement boosts acceptability. Having teams provide input boosts adoption.
• Lack of Critical Assets Database: Without a consolidated database of essential infrastructure assets and business services, incident priority and resolution is difficult. Asset management techniques are needed to build and maintain this knowledge base. Event managers may evaluate event severity and guide response activities effectively using this information.

Conclusion

Now, I trust you have a better understanding of what is an Incident Manager. Incident Manager plays a critical role in managing the lifecycle of service disruptions. Strong leaders, technical specialists, disciplined problem-solvers, and incident managers mitigate the impact of disruptions on the organization.

They exhibit adaptability and concentration as they manage both critical incidents and simple tickets, effectively facilitating team collaboration, establishing trustworthiness with executives, and promoting ongoing enhancements.

However, to comprehend frameworks such as ITIL and wonder who the ITIL Incident manager is and what it requires to be successful, it requires appropriate education, practical experience, and certifications such as the KnowledgeHut ITIL certification training. These credentials certify that you possess the comprehensive skills to spearhead incident response projects, identify underlying causes, promptly restore services, and implement processes that enhance resilience.