IEEE 23612-2026

This document defines a generic incident management process and supporting documentation that can be used to implement incident management and to manage incidents within most organizations, projects or operations activities for a system, service, software, or product. This document also provides supporting diagrams describing the process and example documents. This document is applicable to incident management in all life cycle models (e.g. incremental, waterfall, evolutionary, agile). This document covers incidents identified across the life cycle, including those that arise during both development (e.g. defects) and operation (e.g. those handled by service management).

The purpose of the incident management process is to optimally manage all incidents to resolution. When managing incidents at a high level (e.g. organization or project level), the incident management process is planned and agreed, and the information gathered from reported incidents is used to improve the relevant processes. When an individual incident requires a response, the work is assigned to a suitable party for resolution, and the resolution activities are monitored for acceptability. Once the resolution is approved, then the incident is closed, and the incident management process for that individual incident is deemed complete.

New IEEE Standard - Active. The purpose of this international standard is to define a generic process for incident management that can be used by any organization when performing any form of software and systems development, testing or operations. The processes defined in this document can be used in conjunction with any development life cycle model (e.g. incremental, waterfall, evolutionary, agile).