Problem management roles and responsibilities

Key Takeaways: Problem management roles are the defined responsibilities a team assigns when investigating the root cause of incidents — typically a problem manager who owns the investigation, a process owner who owns the practice, a service owner, service desk agents, a tech lead, and the stakeholders who need to be kept informed.

• What it is: A flexible set of hats, not permanent job titles; roles are assembled per problem, and not every team uses every one.

• Why it matters: Without clear ownership, problems sit in a backlog while the same incidents recur; with it, investigations move and fixes ship.

• How Jira Service Management helps: Assigns problems to named owners, links them to related incidents and changes, and provides the service desk and tech leads with a single shared record to work from.

Problem management roles and responsibilities define who does what during a team's investigation and elimination of the root cause of incidents. Problem management is about more than fixing incidents as they happen — it's about identifying the underlying causes and the best way to eliminate them, and that work succeeds only when everyone knows their role, what they're responsible for, and who fills each role in a given investigation.

Not every team uses every role below, and the designations are flexible rather than permanent — they're assembled for a specific problem investigation. This guide covers the six most common problem management roles and what each is responsible for.

Problem manager

The problem manager owns the overall process for a specific problem. They coordinate and direct all facets of the problem management effort, including bringing the right teams, tools, and information together. The problem manager may also delegate subtasks to other team members as they see fit.

Also called: Problem owner, problem coordinator

Process owner

The process owner is responsible for the overall health and success of the team’s problem management process. They oversee evolution and development of the process, as well as team member training and onboarding.

Also called: Process manager, process coordinator

Service owner

The service owner is responsible for defining ongoing operations and health of the service. This can include measuring and reporting on the value of changes, enhancements, planned downtime, training, documentation, and more.

Also called: Service leader, product manager

Service desk agent

Front-line support for your service desk. The service desk agent is often the first to notice and report an incident or problem. The agent is often also the first person to notice that several unique incidents all relate to a greater problem.

Also called: Agent, Service agent, Support Agent, Help desk agent, Service desk analyst

Tech lead

An individual familiar with the impacted service experiencing a problem or incident. Often a developer or engineer, the tech lead can dive into recent code changes to see what root causes may be contributing to the problem.

Also called: Technical lead, subject matter expert

Stakeholders

Stakeholders can be whoever needs high-level info on the problem but isn’t directly involved in the problem management process. This can be anyone from adjacent teams, to customers, and organizational leaders.

Also called: Customers, executive teams, vendors, end users, business teams