Categorization, Priority Determination, and Target Times

To adequately determine if SLAs are met, it is necessary to categorize and prioritize incidents quickly and correctly.

Categorization

The goals of proper categorization are:

For each incident, the specific service (as listed in the published Service Catalog) will be identified. It is critical to establish with the user the specific area of the service being provided. For example, if it’s PeopleSoft, is it Financial, Human Resources, or another area? If it’s PeopleSoft Financials, is it for General Ledger, Accounts Payable, etc.? Identifying the service properly establishes the appropriate Service Level Agreement and relevant Service Level Targets.

In addition, the severity and impact of the incident must be established. All incidents are important to the user, but incidents that affect large groups of personnel or mission-critical functions need to be addressed before those affecting 1 or 2 people.

Does the incident cause a work stoppage for the user or do they have other means of performing their job? An example would be a broken link on a web page. If there is another navigation path to the desired page, the incident’s severity would be low because the user can still perform the required function.

The incident may create a work stoppage for only one person but the impact is far greater because it is a critical function. An example of this scenario would be the person processing payroll having an issue, which prevents payroll from processing. The impact affects more personnel than just the user.

Priority Determination

The priority given to an incident that will determine how quickly it is scheduled for resolution will be set depending upon the incident's urgency and impact.

Target Times

Incident support for existing services is provided 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, and 365 days per year.

 

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