An incident refers to an unplanned interruption to an IT service or a reduction in the quality of an IT service. Incidents typically involve something that has gone wrong, such as a system outage, a broken printer, a network failure, or an application error.
AÂ request is a request for information, advice, a standard change, or access to an IT service. These are not caused by an issue but rather are part of routine operations, such as requesting new software installation, resetting a password, or requesting hardware.