Priority determination of urgency, impact, and effect/complexity to determine resolution time on SLA

Erna Putri Utami

I want to ask about determining priorities for handling incident reports and service requests by IT. Because I only know that there is an impact and urgency matrix or an impact and effort matrix. How do I combine the three (impact, urgency, and effort) to determine priorities.

Walter Buggenhout

H @Erna Putri Utami,

I would say, basically in the same way as you would do with only impact/urgency. You define a series of values for each element you want to bring into a calculation, you determine a formula to calculate a number that then resolves into one of your priorities.

But - to be honest - bringing effort into the calculation to determine priority seems like a terrible idea. It would mean you have to make an estimate of the effort before you can even begin calculation your priority. Most likely, that is information you won't have when new tickets get created. 

Assuming for a moment that you somehow do have this information, how are you going to manage it? Suppose somebody a ransomware attack - it may be an enormous effort to get this resolved, but are you going to let that influence your priority with the issue (given probably half your company is not able to work anymore)?

If you want to use priority to determine which items you need to work on first, I would dare to consider keeping effort as a separate piece of information. Adding it as a field your items may help you decide which items to work on first when you look at stuff with equal priorities. 

Hope this helps!