Work Classification and Priority
SS uses several concepts to understand and organize work.
Three different questions should not be confused:
- What type of work is this?
- Where does the work fall in Plan, Build, or Operate?
- How urgently does the work need attention?
These questions describe classification, operating context, and priority.
Work Classification
Common categories of ISS work include:
Service Requests
Normal customer requests for assistance, information, equipment, access, or another standard technology need.
Incidents
Unplanned interruptions or reductions in the quality of an existing service.
Problems
A problem represents an underlying cause, or potential cause, of one or more incidents.
Repeatedly restoring the same service without addressing why it continues to fail may resolve incidents without resolving the underlying problem.
Problem identification can generate Plan or Build work intended to prevent future incidents.
Changes
A change is a planned modification that may affect a service or service offering.
Maintenance, projects, incident resolution, security remediation, or continual improvement may all result in changes.
Maintenance and Sustainment
Recurring or planned work necessary to keep services reliable, secure, current, and supportable.
Examples include:
- Patching
- Software upgrades
- Certificate renewal
- Hardware lifecycle replacement
- Preventive maintenance
- Configuration review
- Routine administrative work
Projects
Larger planned bodies of work requiring deliberate planning, coordination, milestones, ownership, or significant organizational impact.
Projects are one method ISS uses to create, replace, upgrade, or significantly improve services and service offerings.
Plan, Build, and Operate
Classification describes what the work is.
Plan, Build, and Operate describe where the work is occurring within the ISS operating model.
Examples:
| Example | Operating Area |
|---|---|
| Password reset | Operate |
| Wireless outage | Operate |
| Analysis of recurring wireless failures | Plan / Continual Improvement |
| Evaluate replacement wireless technology | Plan |
| Replace wireless infrastructure | Build |
| Monitor wireless infrastructure | Operate |
| Deploy a firewall upgrade | Build |
| Develop a strategy for replacing an aging service | Plan |
Some work may move through more than one area.
For example, repeated incidents discovered in Operate may lead to analysis in Plan and ultimately a project or change in Build.
Priority
Priority determines how quickly work needs attention.
ISS uses the ITIL concepts of impact and urgency as a foundation for evaluating priority.
Impact
Impact asks:
How much of the College is affected, and how seriously?
Consider:
- Number of people affected.
- Number of locations affected.
- Service criticality.
- Effect on teaching and learning.
- Effect on College business operations.
- Safety implications.
- Security implications.
- Whether critical functions can continue.
Urgency
Urgency asks:
How quickly must this be addressed?
Consider:
- Time-sensitive deadlines.
- Classes or events currently affected.
- Whether a workaround exists.
- Whether the situation is worsening.
- Regulatory or security deadlines.
- Upcoming institutional activities.
Impact and urgency together help determine priority.
Balancing Operational Priorities
Significant incidents and outages may temporarily take precedence because an existing College service needs to be restored.
Outside of those circumstances, however, Operate does not automatically take priority over Build or Plan.
Managers must deliberately balance work based on:
- College priorities
- Impact and urgency
- Customer commitments
- Service risk
- Project commitments
- Maintenance requirements
- Security needs
- Available resources
- Deadlines
A routine ticket should not automatically interrupt protected project or improvement work simply because it is a ticket.
Likewise, project work should not prevent ISS from responding appropriately when a critical College service fails.
Managers are responsible for making these tradeoffs deliberately rather than allowing whichever request arrived most recently or appears most urgent to consume available resources.
“Urgent” Is Information, Not a Priority Assignment
Customers should tell us when something is urgent and explain its impact.
That information is important and should be documented.
However, ISS must evaluate the request within the broader context of College operations and other work.
A request does not automatically become the highest priority simply because someone labels it “urgent.”