Classify a network incident from users affected, service degradation, duration and business criticality into a P1–P4 priority.
Reach alone over-states severity for partial degradation, so it is multiplied by the degradation factor before scoring. Duration is scored against a four-hour reference and business criticality contributes a fixed band, which keeps a small but revenue-critical outage from being classified as minor. Consistent severity scoring is what makes escalation predictable, and user-minutes lost is the figure that survives contact with a post-incident review.
Incident Severity
severity = weighted impact × 0.5 + duration score (25) + criticality score (25), where weighted impact = reach × degradation.
severity = weighted impact × 0.5 + duration score (25) + criticality score (25), where weighted impact = reach × degradation. Reach alone over-states severity for partial degradation, so it is multiplied by the degradation factor before scoring. Duration is scored against a four-hour reference and business criticality contributes a fixed band, which keeps a small but revenue-critical outage from being classified as minor.
Consistent severity scoring is what makes escalation predictable, and user-minutes lost is the figure that survives contact with a post-incident review.
This calculator takes 5 inputs: Users affected, Total users, Service degradation, Duration so far, Business criticality of the affected service. The pre-filled defaults are a realistic starting point — replace them with figures from your own environment for a result you can act on.