Difference between Impact, Urgency and Priority

ITIL has attempted to clarify the incident severity identification in order for organizations to properly resolve important issues quickly. Let’s look at the definitions

Impact defines the enormity of the situation and mostly deals with “How Many” question. It can be in terms of people, finances, systems, etc. Following examples will provide a little more clarity.

• ·         Number of people affected
• ·         Potential financial losses
• ·         Severity of legal liabilities
• ·         Number of systems affected

Urgency is associated with time. The time it takes to have the perceived Impact. You may think of Urgency as the amount of fuel in an airborne plane. The fuel will run out after a certain time and that duration will define your urgency. If the fuel is expected to run out before the first landing attempt then urgency would be higher as compare to running out before the second or third landing attempts.  

Priority is defined as a function of urgency, some organizations use Priority = Impact + Urgency and others use Priority = Impact * Urgency. Regardless, the end result is a priority for a particular scenario. 

You may use the following chart as a starting point and modify the priority definition based on your organizational needs. Similar to PMP, ITIL is not obsessed with a particular definition of priority, but enforces the idea of having a clear definition. How do you get to that definition is based on your own needs.

	Impact
Urgency		High	Medium	Low
	Critical	P1	P2	P2
	Urgent	P1	P2	P3
	Normal	P2	P2	P3

Before you attempt to draw the above chart for your organization, you need to make sure that definitions for Urgency and Impact are clearly defined. Those definitions will help you determine the Priorities.

Next step after completing this chart will be to implement SLAs (Service Level Agreements) based on the Priority definitions. I.e. P1 could ask for a 24hrs resolution time or P2 could ask for a 3 day resolution time. In addition to the resolution time, you could also associate milestone reporting or timely reporting against with SLAs.

At this point a good question to ask would be “Why am I doing this instead of focusing on my business?”

The main purpose for this exercise is for you to be able to tackle higher priority issues quickly in order to avoid or reduce the impact. This will also allow you to measure the performance of your team against the SLAs and it is this measurement that will give you the ability to drive and monitor improvements in the organization.

Is conflict good for the organization?

Absolutely! Conflict can occur due to difference of opinion, difference in priorities, difference in assessment and difference in approach. As long as you are able to resolve the conflict and are willingness to listen to other ideas then conflict can result in tremendous success for an organization.

If we all had the same thoughts, worked the same way, had same priorities than there would not be any innovation. Ford stated that you can have any color of car as long as it’s black. If there was no conflicting assessment by GM then we all would be driving a black car from 60s today.

Conflict not only exists between two individuals or ideas, but it also exists within. Have you ever wanted to stay in bed on a cold freezing weekday?  I have, but then I have been able to get out of bed by considering the achievements I can make in the office OR I have to feed the dog OR take the kids to school and so on. If we have the ability to resolve the conflicts within then why do we have so much trouble resolving external conflicts?

I would argue that TRUST is not an issue when we are considering two conflicting ideas within, but it is for external conflicts. It is the level of trust in others abilities that keeps us from resolving an external conflict. If this is true then how do we resolve external conflicts as trust is earned not given?

One possible solution to turn conflicts into a positive source of momentum is clear definition of accountabilities within the organization. It will force everyone to present their conflicting ideas as suggestions to the accountable and then leave it up to the individual to determine the course of action based on his assessment of organisational priorities. 

Is Vision Achievable ?

You would not believe how many people have said YES to that question and these people work at senior level positions in business or IT. Why do you think that is?

The primary reason is lack of understanding between a milestone and a vision. People take milestone as a vision and then claim that it is achievable. Obviously a milestone is achievable otherwise it would not be a milestone.  Statements like “We are going to put a man on the moon” are taken as vision simply because the milestone was difficult to achieve at the time, but still it was just a milestone, A vision would be Space Exploration.

A vision is something you will never be able to reach! You will always work towards it, but never achieve it. I would use successful business and happy life as examples. Let’s analyze them one at a time.

Successful Business: No matter at what level a business is, something can always be done to improve and make it more successful. You can have milestone as fortune 100, fortune 10 or the top company in the world in terms of number of employees, return on investment, debt level, number of products, number of industries, etc. There will always be something that you can do to make it more successful. More people can be hired, ROI can be improved or increased, debt level or liabilities can be decreased, number of products can be increased, and more industries or sub industries can be targeted with additional products.

Happy Life: What does happy life means to you? Would you consider 100 billion in your bank account as the ultimate sign of happiness?  Well would the long traffic lines OR delays in your plane taking off due to weather OR not having a family OR your inability to save someone from dying OR the wrinkles on your face make you unhappy? In essence 100 billion is nothing but a milestone towards achieving happiness while you still have to achieve an endless list of things to be happy.

We can conclude that Vision is NOT achievable, but milestones are! The following sequence can be really helpful in clarifying your understanding.

Vision
Milestone – Helps you verify that you are making progress towards your vision
Objective – help you determine if you achieved your Milestone
Critical Success Factors – Help you determine if you achieved your objective
KPI – help you quantify the objective in order for you to measure success against the CSFs
Measurements or Metrics– help you quantify your KPIs