You're facing a flood of change requests in IT. How do you decide what takes priority?

Impact assessment is must and must be divided into 4 categories majorly: "Change implementation which can reduce the business loss/high risk Impact or increase the business" should be priority one. "Change implementation which can provide the workaround for business so that users have no impact on business" should be priority two. "Change implementation where users are impacted but none of business application or business is impacted" should be priority three. "Change implementation for a user to modify organisational specific IT policies" should be least priority.

Impact assessments play a crucial role in prioritizing IT requests by evaluating the potential effects of each request on the organization’s operations, security & overall goals. They help identify which requests offer the most significant benefits or pose the highest risks if unaddressed, thereby enabling decision-makers to allocate resources efficiently & address the most critical needs first. This structured approach ensures that high-impact requests are prioritized, maintaining system stability & aligning IT efforts with strategic objectives.

Avalie cada solicitação de mudança considerando benefícios e riscos. Priorize alterações que melhorem desempenho, segurança ou conformidade. Alterações de alto impacto devem estar no topo da lista. Mudanças com impacto mínimo ou cosméticas podem esperar. Avaliações criteriosas garantem operações eficientes e seguras.

Aligning business goals & objectives with IT requests helps streamline prioritization by ensuring that resources are focused on initiatives that directly support the organization's strategic direction. When IT requests are evaluated against business priorities, those that contribute most significantly to achieving key objectives e.g. increasing efficiency, enhancing customer satisfaction, or driving revenue growth, are given precedence. This alignment ensures that IT efforts are not just reactive but are strategically integrated into the broader business plan, thereby optimizing impact & value creation.

Urgency levels significantly influence the prioritization of IT requests by identifying which issues require immediate attention to prevent severe operational disruptions or security breaches. Requests marked as urgent typically address critical system failures, compliance deadlines, or vulnerabilities that could lead to significant business risks. By categorizing requests based on their urgency, IT departments can ensure that the most time-sensitive & potentially damaging issues are resolved promptly, maintaining business continuity & protecting organizational assets.

It is always important to analyse the patterns of the change requests. Is it something which repeats during certain times like a new product launch, festive offers, immediately after new freshers have joined etc. This will help to plan proactively for such high volume of change requests in advance. You will already be aware of the flood before it happens and be planned for it in terms of resources, communication transparency etc. If it's a completely new event and you have never faced this before, try to figure out the root cause of this. It can be one of the above items or maybe a new problem which is causing this like a new application, new infra etc. Once identified, it becomes much easier to ensure that it doesn't repeat again.