7 Steps to Create an ITIL Priority Matrix

Creating an Information Technology Infrastructure Library or ITIL priority matrix involves several steps that help organizations categorize and prioritize incidents and requests. The ITIL priority matrix is based on their impact and urgency. This ITIL priority matrix is crucial for efficient IT service management, ensuring that resources are allocated effectively to address the most critical issues first. Here are the 7 steps to create an ITIL priority matrix. Since the Help Desk and IT department have finite resources, creating a priority matrix will allow the IT department to focus on the major incidents before working on incidents affecting a small group or single user.

ITIL priority matrix definition

An incident priority matrix is simply a tool for prioritizing incidents based on their impact and urgency. An ITIL priority matrix assists the Help Desk and Information Technology staff in prioritizing which incident tickets need attention most. Based on the incident priority, critical issues can be resolved first, ensuring that incidents with the highest impact and urgency are addressed first.

7 Steps to Create an ITIL Priority Matrix

1. Define Impact: Impact refers to how an incident can affect business processes. It is usually categorized into critical, high, medium, and low levels. Critical and high-impact incidents typically affect the entire organization or mission-critical business processes; the medium might affect a department or several users, and the low usually impacts a single user or non-critical system functionality.

2. Define Urgency: Urgency measures how quickly a solution is required. Like impact, urgency can be categorized into critical, high, medium, and low. Critical and high-urgency issues need immediate attention to avoid significant business loss or disruption. Medium urgency requires a timely response to prevent escalating impact, and low urgency has a minimal effect on business operations.

3. Combine Impact and Urgency: Create a matrix that crosses impact with urgency. The intersection of these two factors determines the priority level of an incident or request. Most matrices are set up in a table format with urgency on one axis and impact on the other. A critical impact and urgency incident will be the highest priority incident. This means the IT department needs to drop everything and focus on resolving the incident immediately.

4. Assign Priority Levels: With the matrix grid established, define priority levels at each intersection. Common practice is to use priority codes like P1, P2, P3, and P4. P1 might represent high impact and high urgency, P2 could be critical impact and high urgency or high impact and critical urgency, P3 might be medium impact and medium urgency, and P4 could be low impact and low urgency.

5. Develop Response and Resolution Timelines: Establish appropriate response and resolution times for each priority level. These times dictate how quickly the IT team should respond to and resolve an issue based on its priority. For example, P1 incidents might require a response within 1 hour and resolution within 4 hours, whereas P4 might have a response within 24 hours and resolution within a few days or as agreed.

6. Documentation and Training: Document the priority matrix in IT service management policies and procedures. Train IT staff and relevant stakeholders on using the matrix to categorize incidents and requests accurately.

7. Review and Adjust: Periodically review the matrix and its effectiveness. Gather feedback from users and IT staff, and adjust the impact, urgency, and priority levels if necessary to align with changing business needs and realities.

Why use an ITIL Priority Matrix?

Prioritize incidents to assign resources to the highest-priority incidents efficiently. By following these 7 steps and Help Desk Management best practices, you can create a robust ITIL priority matrix that helps streamline operations, improve response times, and ensure critical issues receive the attention they need promptly.