Period Comparison
The Incident resolution process significantly deteriorated, with average duration more than doubling and rework rates increasing by over 50%, despite a large reduction in process variation.
The Incident Management process has significantly deteriorated. Average resolution time increased by 127% and rework jumped from 40% to 60%. These critical degradations are likely driven by a shift to a small number of highly complex incidents, which overshadows any gains from process standardization.
📅 Baseline: 2024-01-02 – 2024-01-15
📅 Comparison: 2024-01-16 – 2024-01-29
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Overall verdict
Significantly Deteriorated
✓ Confidence: Moderate
The verdict is driven by the catastrophic increase in two key metrics: Average Duration (+127%) and Rework Rate (+51%). These indicate a severe loss of efficiency and effectiveness. The confidence is 'Moderate' instead of 'High' only because the comparison period's sample size (25 items) is extremely small compared to the baseline (1015 items), suggesting the results could be an outlier.
⬆ Improved transitions
Open - Work in Progress
64.07 → 28.55 hrs
-35.52
Open - Pending
46.96 → 0.36 hrs
-46.60
⬇ Deteriorated transitions
Work in Progress - Completed
23.00 → 248.34 hrs
+225.34
Pending - Work in Progress
43.26 → 259.75 hrs
+216.49
Absent in comparison period
Start - ClosedCompleted - Work in ProgressStart - Open
Rework volume shift: The overall rework rate increased dramatically from 39.7% to 60.0%. This is reflected in the high proportion of rework variants in the comparison period, where 60% of all work items followed a path with at least one rework loop.
Variants — baseline
161
Rework share: 39.7%
Variants — comparison
11 ▲ -150
Rework share: 60.0%
Dominant path changed — the most common workflow route shifted between periods.
Baseline: Work in Progress -> Completed -> Closed (28.2% of items)
Comparison: Two paths tied for dominant: 'Pending -> Work in Progress -> Completed -> Closed' and 'Work in Progress -> Open -> Work in Progress -> Completed -> Closed' (20% of items each).
The process became far less diverse, with the number of unique paths dropping by 93%. However, the dominant path changed from a simple, non-rework flow to more complex paths involving rework loops. The consolidation of work into fewer, much slower, and higher-rework variants is a key feature of this comparison.
Shift in Work Mix to Complex 'Problem' Incidents
✓ Confidence: High
The comparison period likely consists of a small number of unusually complex, long-running incidents, which are fundamentally different from the high-volume, transactional work seen in the baseline. This would explain the longer durations, higher rework, and the massive drop in volume.
Work item volume dropped 97.5% (1015 to 25). Field usage data shows a shift from a diverse mix of assignment groups to just two ('Mobile / Cell Phones', 'Computer/Accessories') and new, potentially complex subcategories like 'Re-Image Laptop'.
Resource or Knowledge Gap
✓ Confidence: Moderate
The team(s) handling the incidents in the comparison period may have been understaffed, lacked the specific expertise for these complex issues, or were dependent on a single subject matter expert, causing the massive increase in active 'Work in Progress' time.
The 10x increase in the 'Work in Progress -> Completed' transition duration is a direct measure of active work time, which is a strong indicator of a resolution bottleneck.
Statistical Anomaly Due to Small Sample Size
✓ Confidence: High
With only 25 work items, the comparison period may be a statistical outlier. One or two extremely problematic incidents could be skewing the averages for the entire period, meaning this is not a true reflection of a systemic process change.
The sample size is too small to draw definitive, long-term conclusions about the process health. The standard deviation for duration also increased, suggesting higher variability.