Global bank reduces priority 1 incidents by 50% in year one, and and additional 20% in year two
A Single Solution Provider – Kepner-Tregoe
One Problem Managment Executive, Two Global Banks
Joe Gallagher, the managing director and global head of problem management at a global financial institution, and formerly in the same position at Deutsche Bank, was struggling to improve problem management in vastly different IT infrastructures. He turned to Kepner-Tregoe and its problem management tools to address each bank’s unique challenge.
Global Bank #1—Siloed Root Cause Analysis and Incident Management
Deutsche Bank has more than 78,000 employees, more than 2,700 branches in 70 countries and assets of almost $2 trillion. Joe Gallagher had teams of problem managers at multiple locations across the globe. The challenge was each siloed group of problem managers was using different root cause analysis (RCA) and incident management tools to address client incidents at a local level—but they couldn’t seem to reduce the number of incidents or the time required to solve them.
Kepner-Tregoe proposed and implemented a two-stage restructuring plan to create one problem management team using the same set of analysis techniques.
STAGE I
- All problem managers and their staff received Kepner-Tregoe (KT) Resolve training and earned their certification.
- Transitioned to KT RCA tools learned during training.
- Inspired problem managers to use Kepner-Tregoe problem analysis, problem specification and problem statement to change team’s approach to client incidents.
STAGE II
- Provided KT Resolve training for some Subject Matter Experts (SME) who did not participate in original training sessions.
- Applied best-practices training and problem management tools to decrease time to resolution.
RESULTS
- Within the first year following KT Resolve training and introduction of problem management tools, client-facing incidents (Priority 1, Severity 1) were reduced by 50% and an additional 20% reduction was realized during the second year.
- RCA time periods were decreased from a number of weeks to 5 to 10 days and corrective actions were implemented quicker
Isolated problem manager teams were consolidated into a single unit using the Kepner-Tregoe Problem Management process to standardize their client-incident practices increasing their productivity by 39%.
The Kepner-Tregoe’s problem management reorganization and training case was a Pink Elephant finalist in the 2011 IT Excellence Awards and received the ITIL Project of the Year award.
Global Bank #2—Problem Management Team Administrating, Not Managing
- Transform “problem administrators” to “problem managers.”
- Become leaders of RCA process.
- Evaluate current work with LEAN techniques to determine value.
- Eliminate significant waste from the process.
- Train “problem administrators” to become “problem managers”.
- Initiate KT Resolve training and certification during two-year period for PMs and SMEs.
- Standardize the RCA process throughout this global financial institution’s IT infrastructure.
- Provide change management team with improved RCA data, resulting in comprehensive and enhanced insights to address problem manager process and training deficiencies.
- Reduce incidents and promote organizational improvements.
RESULTS
-
Priority 1 incidents reduced by 67%.
-
Significant reduction of backlogged overdue investigations—see chart below.


Kepner-Tregoe Solutions Create “Thinking Organizations”
- KT Resolve training improved the problem management teams’ ability to address client incidents.
- Improved monitoring led to earlier threshold alarms, better alerts and more granular monitoring.
- The root cause analysis process was streamlined with better incident documentation.
- Extend-a-Fix practices identified more than 10,000 defects with the implementation of a better problem management process customized for each bank.
About Kepner-Tregoe