8 Strategies to Reduce Mean Time to Repair (MTTR)

In the IT department, mean time to repair (MTTR) is one of the most effective metrics to monitor. It measures how quickly and effectively you can address significant issues in your network. The faster it is, the more reliable your department is going to be and the more productive your organization is going to be.

So what steps can you take to reduce MTTR?

Top Strategies to Reduce MTTR

These are some of your best strategies for reducing MTTR:

1.? ? ? Employ effective network monitoring.?

Network monitoring is arguably your best first line of defense. With the help of an enterprise network monitoring tool, you can greatly increase transparency in your network and more thoroughly understand how each of your nodes connects to the others. If there are any issues with bottlenecks or connections, you can receive alerts almost immediately, so that you can take action faster.?

You can also use network monitoring tools for network planning purposes, orchestrating scalable solutions that serve your needs while simultaneously minimizing the potential for downtime.?

On top of that, practicing ongoing network monitoring can help you review the results of your workflow improvements, so you can determine objectively whether you’re making substantive changes for the better.

2.? ? ? Utilize incident management planning.?

You should also utilize incident management planning. Essentially, this means orchestrating plans and systems so you can respond to incidents in a quick, appropriate manner. Make a master list of everything that can go wrong, then document a simple workflow for how you respond to each type of issue. Every relevant team member should not only understand how to respond to these incidents, but also how to find the documentation necessary to respond as quickly and appropriately as possible.

3.? ? ? Be proactive in prevention.?

Although you can make the argument that this isn’t going to reduce your “time to repair” statistics directly, you can prevent the need for most repairs and keep your systems running smoothly by being more proactive in prevention. That is to say, you should invest at least as heavily, and possibly even more heavily, in preventing problems, rather than figuring out how to respond to them. At the very least, this should help you stop small issues from snowballing into bigger ones.

4.? ? ? Train and educate your response teams.?

Within your IT department should be a thoroughly competent and vetted response team. Each member should be trained and educated on how to respond to various types of incidents. They should know that a prompt resolution is the ultimate goal, and they should have the resources and knowledge necessary to achieve it. If there are any issues in how your team members respond to incidents in progress, make note of it and consider issuing retraining.

5.? ? ? Automate what you can.?

You can likely automate numerous tasks in your IT department, accelerating your performance and preventing certain types of issues. For example, setting an automatic alert for when network conditions exceed a certain threshold could give you enough time to reallocate resources or make changes so that you don’t have to deal with downtime. Automating your IT department does take upfront effort, but it’s typically worth it if it means solving issues faster.

6.? ? ? Make use of alerts.?

Alerts are going to be your best friend. Even your most talented IT members can’t keep an eye on every corner of your organization simultaneously. They’re going to need alerts and other communications to guide their focus and help them decide when it’s appropriate to take action. Keep refining this process if you want to keep reducing your MTTR figures.

7.? ? ? Practice chaos engineering.?

Chaos engineering essentially means intentionally causing problems in a system as a way to test its resilience. It’s an indispensable tool in your arsenal, and one that can reveal weak points that you can eliminate for greater efficiency. If and when something goes wrong, how does your response team handle it? How could they handle it better?

8.? ? ? Conduct root cause analyses.?

Whenever you discover a significant issue, conduct a root cause analysis to figure out what happened. The better you understand the ins and outs of your network and IT department, the faster you can respond to repair needs.

Improving Your Results

After applying these strategies, you’ll probably notice significant improvements to the speed at which you can make repairs in your IT department. However, there’s no such thing as a perfect approach to maintenance and repairs, so it’s a good idea to adopt a mentality of continuous improvement. Keep scouting for little ways that you can optimize your workflows, technologies, and processes so that you can keep applying iterative improvements and ultimately put your organization in a much more agile, competitive position.