How do I create an impact urgency priority matrix?

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.

Note that the priority values listed above are just examples for this tutorial. You can also create priorities that are specific to your service project. See Defining priority field values for more details.

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

• Impact: Extensive, Significant, Moderate, Minor 

Configure the workflow

1. Go to the workflow that is used by your Change issue type. 

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

3. Add the following four transitions from this status:

   1. Highest

   2. High

   3. Medium

   4. Low

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, and Low to Low. 

3. Publish the workflow. 

After configuring the workflow, the workflow transitions a change to Priority triage status as soon as an issue is created. You will also have 4 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.