Operationally, P1, P2, and P3 have very specific meanings.
- P1 means all hands on deck. Drop everything else and work on this. Don’t eat, don’t sleep until it’s handled. This has an open P1 in your operations tracking system.
- P2 means that there is some impact, but not really for customers. P2 is like a P1, but for internal-only services. It’s also to get everybody to put eyes on a specific problem. This has an open P2 in your operations tracking system.
- P3 is important, but not quite an outright fire.
When I’ve run app dev teams, I’ve treated them similarly, but not quite at the same level.
- P1 - Urgent means don’t work on anything else until this is done. If someone else asks you to do something, they have to wait. It is a sprint-breaker, meaning that it takes priority over all other sprint tasks.
- P2 - Very High is lower than a P1, signifying give this ticket your priority, even if it’s not the only thing you’re looking at. It is a sprint-breaker, meaning that it takes priority over all other sprint tasks.
- P3 - High is simply more important than other work. For example, I use this when tracking release blockers for things. Not a sprint-breaker.
- P4 - Normal is just a normal, average ticket. Groom appropriately.
- P5 - Low is something that you want to keep track of, and that you want to get around to eventually.