How do you define and communicate incident severity levels in your organization? (2024)

A common framework for incident severity levels is based on four factors: user impact, business impact, technical impact, and time to resolve. You can use these factors to assign a numerical or alphabetical level to each incident, such as Level 1 (critical), Level 2 (major), Level 3 (minor), and Level 4 (low). The higher the level, the more resources and attention you need to allocate to the incident.

Your incident severity levels should reflect your business goals and expectations. For example, if your organization values customer satisfaction and retention, you might consider an incident that affects a large number of users or a key feature as a high severity level. If your organization values revenue and growth, you might consider an incident that affects your sales or marketing channels as a high severity level. You should also consider the potential reputational and regulatory risks of an incident.

Once you have defined your incident severity levels, you need to communicate them clearly and frequently to your internal and external stakeholders. You should have a communication plan that specifies who needs to be notified, when, how, and what information they need to know. You should also use consistent terminology and language to avoid confusion and ambiguity. For example, you can use terms like "incident", "issue", "problem", and "outage" to describe different stages or types of incidents.

Your incident severity levels are not set in stone. You should review and update them regularly to ensure they are relevant and accurate. You should collect feedback from your team, customers, and other stakeholders on how they perceive and experience incidents. You should also analyze your incident data and metrics to identify trends, patterns, and gaps. You should use this information to improve your incident severity levels and your incident management process.

Your incident severity levels are only useful if your team understands and applies them correctly. You should train and educate your team on how to use your incident severity framework, how to assess and report incidents, and how to communicate with stakeholders. You should also create and share documentation and guidelines that explain your incident severity levels and their implications. You should reinforce your incident severity culture through regular exercises, simulations, and feedback sessions.

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?

Major Incident Management

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