Issues management process is an on-going process of aligning organizations behavior with stakeholder expectations. Issues are a sign that this alignment is missing. However, through a process of identifying issues early, prioritizing them, and closely monitoring their evolution, issues can be managed, either by changing the organization's behavior or its stakeholders' expectations, or both.

This process can be divided in two main complementary areas. Gathering new information and managing existing information. In other words we can divide the process in two different but inter-related activities: Issues definition and Issues management. There are four steps regarding issues definition. You will need to start to identify new primary issues, analyze the new information, take actions in order to solve it, and finally validate it.

Efficient Issues management allows you to update your knowledge on the quality of your system, and therefore give you the necessary metrics to improve your customers’ satisfaction and consequently your business activity.

Issues identification

Start to define your own issue types

An issue can be identified, submitted by a customer, salesperson, engineer, test engineer, or someone else participating in the software development process. Start to organize all the information by creating different issues types.

Analysis

Which of these issues could cause significant damage to the customer's reputation or business operations if not managed effectively? Start to prioritize the issues.

Document issues and take actions

Prepare and implement an action plan to solve the issue. Document them in some consistent, accessible, and reviewable way by using one of the in-box available reports.