4.1 Using Priority
This is an example of a reasonable use of RT's priority system to
manage a group of sysadmins. Credit for this goes to Luke Hankins.
There are some tickets that will never get done. This is not a reflection on the eptitude of the sysadmins, it's just that we'll never have enough time to do all the little things. As long as tasks are given the right priority, the right things will get done in the right order.
We can identify five levels of priority for tasks:
- Low - Minor annoyance, there is a workaround.
- Medium - Some annoyance, there is a workaround.
- High - Lots of annoyance, there is a workaround.
- Critical - Something is partly broken or someone can't do part of their job as a result. No workaround.
- Fatal - Something is very broken or someone can't do any of their job. No workaround.
RT allows you to assign a priority from 0-99 to a ticket.
We decide to assign the following ranges for each priority level.
This isn't configured in RT, it's set as company policy.
1-10 for Low tickets, 11-20 for Medium tickets and so on to 41-50 for Fatal tickets.
They start at the lowest number in the range and slowly grow to the max.
We decide that from our team, there will always be one person 'one-call', leaving the rest of the team to carry on with their work uninterrupted.
The on-call person is responsible for taking incoming tickets and giving them a priority, as well as setting the due dates, merging it with any existing tickets, etc. This must be done within a set time. I've used 8 business hours to good effect.
The on-call person is also required to take a crack at all Critical and Fatal tickets that come in on his watch. If it's not within his ken, it should be handed off to an able person.
The on-call person is not responsible for any Low/Medium/High tickets that come in after they have been given a priority. By definition, these tickets have a workaround and thus they can wait.
Everyone else is resposible for working their tickets in priority order and grabbing (or being given by management) more tickets when their queues get low.