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How do I create an impact urgency priority matrix?

In Jira Service Management, you can manually assign priority levels, create an an impact urgency priority matrix, or use automation to automatically assign priorities for you. Learn how to create an automation rule to prioritize your incidents.

This article shows how you can create a matrix to define impact and urgency to define how your team prioritizes requests. Below is an example of an impact and urgency matrix using the priority rating that exist in Jira Service Management. This can be a starting point for creating your own matrix, or you can create a completely new matrix.

IMPACT

URGENCY

 

 

 

 

 

Critical

High

Medium

Low

Lowest

Extensive / Widespread

Highest priority

High priority

Medium priority

Low priority

Lowest priority

Significant / Large

Highest priority

High priority

Medium priority

Low priority

Lowest priority

Moderate / Limited

High priority

Medium priority

Low priority

Low priority

Lowest priority

Minor / Localized

Medium priority

Low priority

Lowest priority

Low priority

Lowest priority

Note that the priority values listed here are just examples. You can also create priorities that are specific to your service project. For more details see Defining priority field values.

Before you begin

Make sure you have the following two custom fields of the type Select List (single choice), each containing the values listed in the previous table:

  • Urgency: Critical, High, Medium, Low, Lowest

  • Impact: Extensive, Significant, Moderate, Minor 

Configure the workflow

  1. Go to Settings () > Issues > Workflows.

  2. Find the workflow that is used by your Change issue type and select Edit

  3. Between the Create transition and your first status, add a new status and name it Priority Triage

  4. Add the following five transitions from this status:

    1. Highest

    2. High

    3. Medium

    4. Low

    5. Lowest

In each of these transitions, add a post function

  1. Select the Update Issue Field post function. 

  2. In the post function, update the Priority field to match the transition, for example, the Highest transition will have a post function that changes the Priority field to Highest. Similarly, the High transition will have this post function to set the Priority field as High, and the Medium transition to set the value to Medium, Low transition to Low, and Lowest transition to Lowest. 

  3. Publish the workflow. 

change management post function

After configuring the workflow, the workflow transitions a change to Priority triage status as soon as an issue is created. You will also have four transitions to set the Priority to a value. 

Next, set up automation rules that check the value of the Urgency and Impact fields and fires off the corresponding transition according to the matrix.  

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