Determine the business impact of your problem

When you report a problem to IBM, you are asked to supply a severity level. Therefore, you must understand and assess the business impact of the problem that you are reporting.

Severity 1

The problem has a critical business impact: You are unable to use the program, resulting in a critical impact on operations. This condition requires an immediate solution.

Severity 2

This problem has a significant business impact: The program is usable, but it is severely limited.

Severity 3

The problem has some business impact: The program is usable, but less significant features (not critical to operations) are unavailable.

Severity 4

The problem has minimal business impact: The problem causes little impact on operations or a reasonable circumvention to the problem was implemented.