[rt-users] Severity codes

[Jason Taylor]

Andy Lester wrote:

> I'm thinking of adding some sort of severity code to my RT3 install.
> We're tracking programming defects.  
> 
> Something like "Pick one or more of these effects":
> 
> * User showstopper
> * User gets error message as noise, but life goes on
> * Throws crap in the error logs
> * Corrupts data
> * Makes sales reps call
> * Is bad code, but still works
> 
> Anyone done something like this?  What severities did you use?  How did
> it work out for you?
> 
> xoa
> 
Sure am.  I went with:

Severity 1 - Chimera
Severity 2 - Low
Severity 3 - Average
Severity 4 - High
Severity 5 - Critical
Severity 6 - Emergency

In addition to these severities I have an "estimated time to completion":

     1 hour or less
     more than 1 hour to 1 day
     more than 1 day to 1 week
     more than 1 week to 1 month
     more than 1 month

I then use this matrix to assign the built-in RT priority:

				  	Severity
     ETC			1	2	3	4	5	6
------------------------------------------------------------------
ETC <= 1 hour		1	2	3	3	3	10
1 hour < ETC <= 1 day	1	2	3	3	3	10
1 day < ETC <= 1 week	1	2	3	4	5	10
1 week < ETC <= 1 month	1	3	4	5	6	10
1 month < ETC		1	4	5	6	7	10
	
So priority 3, for example, would get a starting priority of 20 and a 
final priority of 29.

Finally, I use this matrix as a guide to when/how often I work on 
projects of each priority.  Of course, projects with a higher RT 
priority within my home-brew priority bands gets done first.

Pri	  	Hours per Day
	Monday	Tuesday	Wednsdy	Thrsday Friday
1	-	-	-	-	-
2	2	-	-	-	-
3	4	4	4	4	2
4	2	-	2	-	-
5	-	4	-	2	-
6-9	-	-	-	2	6*
10		   as required

If I'm all out of pri. 6-9 stuff to do on Fridays, I devote 2 hours to 
pri. 1 projects.

The goal of all this complication is to push as much work through the 
door in the shortest amount of time possible while still devoting time 
to highly important and/or long term projects and not completely 
ignoring the very low priority ones.  One of the key components is 
*strongly* encouraging requesters to mark the severity as average. 
Fortunately, we're a small enough shop that I usually know if someone is 
crying wolf and I just adjust the severity down.

It did take some getting used to and I still haven't completely 
disciplined myself to follow the work schedule, but overall it works 
quite well.  All projects get a fair shake.