Understanding Impact, Urgency, and Priority

To assist IT in allocating resources, requests sent to the LETU Service Desk are assigned a priority. This helps us determine what we should work on first. This priority is assigned based on two factors: Impact and Urgency.

Impact

Impact is the measure of effect of an incident or service request. It is the scope or number of people affected.

1 - Affects Organization

  • Affects all or the vast majority of the university population

2 - Affects Department/Multiple Employees or Multiple Students

  • Affects a group of students and/or employees

3 - Affects Individual

  • Affects a single student or employee

Urgency

Urgency is the importance of an incident or service request and describes how quickly it needs attention

1 - Critical service unavailable / critical service request

  • A service that has critical impact to university operations has a problem, and there is no workaround available
  • There is significant financial impact to the university

2 - Service unavailable or standard business process request

  • Any standard service or business process has a problem, and there is no workaround available
  • There is moderate financial impact to the university

3 - Nice to have

  • A service or business process has a problem, but there is a workaround available
  • Improvements to existing operations

4 - I have a question

  • Information is needed about an existing or potential service

Priority

Priority is the importance of an incident or service request. When IT resources are allocated to requests, higher-priority requests will take precedence over lower-priority requests.

1 - Low

  • Resources will be allocated as available.

2 - Medium

  • Standard priority assigned to most requests under normal operations.

3 - High

  • Significant resources will be allocated until the incident is resolved.

4 - Emergency

  • All available resources will be allocated until the incident is resolved