The identification of issues, both internal and external, involves the identification of actual issues, hazards, threats, and vulnerabilities that are or will impact the Service Engagement. This is the basis for sound and successful issue management. Issues must be identified and described in an understandable way before they can be assessed and managed properly.

Particular consideration should be made to issues that are:

• Discovered through performing verification and validation activities.
• A result of significant deviations to the estimates in the Service Delivery plan.
• From dependencies (either internal or external) that have not been satisfied.
• A result of a risk materializing.
• From data access, collection, privacy or security constraints.
• From stakeholder representation or involvement constraints.

During the Transition Handover-In phase of the Service Engagement, it is often beneficial to conduct a formal issue workshop, inviting all key stakeholders (including client) to participate in identifying an initial set of Service Engagement issues, using the material collected from the Sales process as the initial source.

Identifying (and documenting) issues is an ongoing task throughout the course of the Service Engagement, and takes into account that issues that have been identified earlier will change or disappear and new issues might appear. All relevant stakeholders should be involved in identifying issues and all key areas within the Service Engagement should be subject to issue identification.