Parameters For Problem Prioritization

Every ticket should be allocated an individual priority derived from its perceived urgency and impact. The coding system described below is used to prioritize problems. This combines the impact with urgency to give an overall priority level. The higher the urgency and impact, the higher is the priority assigned.

• Impact is a measure of the extent of the problem and of the potential damage that can be caused before it can be resolved. It also implicates how critical the downtime is for the business. Usually it is measured by the number of influenced users.
• Urgency is a measure of how quickly a resolution of the problem is required. In a IT service industry, it is usually measured in terms of Service Level Agreements (SLA). If more than one service is impacted, parameters for the higher urgency service will be considered. SLA parameters are usually pre-defined and configured in the IT Service Management tool based on the priority of the tickets.

Problem prioritization must also consider the severity of the problems. Severity indicates how serious the problem is from a service or customer perspective as well as from an infrastructure perspective. For example,

• How long it will take to fix the problem?
• How many people are required to fix the problem and what should be their skills?
• How much it will cost?
• How many technology configuration items are affected?
• Is there an impact on the production server?
• Is there an impact on multiple servers / applications?
• Can the system be recovered or does it need to be replaced? Etc.

Priority Levels

Blocker

Critical function/system of an application unavailable or inoperable or severely degraded causing major impact on service delivery and Client’s business. Major sections of Client application or multi customer locations are impacted. No alternative, workaround or bypass is available.

Critical

A critical business process/function/system is impaired, suffering or degraded, causing impact on a part of service delivery or on a dedicated critical business activity. Minority of Client application or one Client location is impacted. Inefficient or non-acceptable alternative, workaround by-pass is available.

Normal

A non-critical business process/function/system is affected, suffering or degraded, causing impact on a non-critical part of service delivery or on a non-critical dedicated business activity. Only a few individual application users are impacted but the functionality is available for all. Acceptable and efficient alternative, workaround or bypasses are available.

Non-Critical / Minor

These are problems with less severity or low impact incident which does not require immediate attention.