Determine the business impact

When you report a problem to IBM Support you will be asked to supply a severity level. Therefore, you need to understand and assess the business impact of the problem you are reporting.

About this task

You must assign a severity level to the problem when you report it, so it is important to understand the business impact of the problem you are reporting. The following table displays the four different severity levels as defined by the Software Support Handbook.

Table 1. IBM Support severity levels
Level	Description
Severity 1	Critical situation/System Down Business critical software component is inoperable Usually applies to production environment Critical interface has failed Examples: Production orders are stuck at the created status. Payment agents are not picking up orders. Note: IBM Support who is available around the clock and around the world to answer your questions or provide solutions for issues that you might encounter while using the application.
Severity 2	A software component is severely restricted in its use, causing significant business impact. Example: To complete testing for an upcoming production release, users are unable to install fix packs on lower environments.
Severity 3	Moderate impact: A non-critical software component is malfunctioning, causing moderate business impact. Example: A client cannot connect to a server
Severity 4	Minimal impact: A non-critical software component is malfunctioning, causing minimal impact, or a non-technical request is made. Example: Documentation is incorrect. Additional documentation requested.