Change Urgency and Timing

In addition to being categorized by the impact as Widespread, Significant, Moderate, and Minor; change requests may also be expedited through the process by being assigned a combination of Urgency and Timing. Note: the standard default Urgency-Timing is Low-Normal.

URGENCY and TIMING
Urgency	Timing (Typical Values)	Impact (Typical Values)	Urgency Definition	Approval Required	Recommended Lead-Time
Critical	Emergency Expedited	Widespread Significant	Service is down or service is up but severely degraded Change needs to be made immediately	Retroactive approvals by Business and/or Implementation and CAB	None
High	Expedited	Widespread Significant	Service is at risk (although service might not be down) Change needs to be made because of a client request that has been validated by SME/ technical expert and/or SME/technical expert has determined that that the change needs to go in without waiting for the recommended lead-time	Retroactive approvals by Business and/or Implementation and CAB	None
Medium	Normal Latent	Moderate Minor	Service is not down. This is a "business as usual" change request.	Refer to Lead-Times table	Refer to Lead-Times table
Low	Normal Latent No Impact	Moderate Minor	Service is not down. This is a "business as usual" change request.	Refer to Lead-Times table	Refer to Lead-Times table

Definition of “Timing” Value of Change Request

“Timing” specifies the relative urgency of the change so that the approvers can assess its magnitude.

"Timing" Value	"Timing" Definition
Emergency	Resolves an incident or problem deemed critical to the business continuity where a work-around is not sufficient. Emergency changes require retroactive approval by the CAB.
Expedited	Enterprise-wide impact with an associated risk. Expedited changes require retroactive approval by the CAB.
Latent	Change that has already been performed (for example, if a task implementer is assigned to replace the hard drive on a PC and then decides to upgrade the memory while the box open is open) and requires approval after the fact. Latent timing automatically sets the request status to Completed after you save the change request.
Normal	This is the default value of a change that would go through the "normal" approval process (business or implementation, and/or CAB approval).
No Impact	This is reserved for only Pre-Approved change requests (CRs that require no approval at all). For example, "Firewall rule request" CRs. Caution: Setting the Timing value to "No Impact" would close your CR immediately after you created it.