CIM CIM Incident Categorization & Prioritization 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: In a standard priority matrix, which combination results in the highest (P1/Critical) priority?
- Low impact, Low urgency
- Low impact, High urgency
- High impact, High urgency (Correct answer)
- Medium impact, Low urgency
Correct answer: High impact, High urgency
In a standard priority matrix, High impact combined with High urgency produces the highest (P1/Critical) priority designation.
Question 2: What is 'functional escalation' in incident management?
- Notifying the board of directors about all incidents
- Automatically closing low-priority incidents
- Transferring the incident to a team with greater technical expertise (Correct answer)
- Increasing the SLA resolution target time
Correct answer: Transferring the incident to a team with greater technical expertise
Functional escalation transfers an incident to a support group with greater skill or authority to resolve a specific technical issue, distinct from hierarchical escalation to management.
Question 3: What is 'hierarchical escalation' primarily used for in incident management?
- Routing incidents between technical teams of equal skill
- Informing management when incidents breach SLA or require executive awareness and resources (Correct answer)
- Automatically categorizing incidents by type
- Reducing the number of active incidents in the queue
Correct answer: Informing management when incidents breach SLA or require executive awareness and resources
Hierarchical escalation notifies senior management or executives when an incident exceeds SLA thresholds or requires management decisions and additional resources.
Question 4: A CIM discovers that an incident initially logged as P3 is actually causing a complete outage for 200 users. What is the correct action?
- Keep the original priority to avoid confusion in the system
- Re-prioritize the incident to P1 and initiate major incident procedures (Correct answer)
- Close the incident and open a new one at P1
- Wait for the next scheduled priority review to update the classification
Correct answer: Re-prioritize the incident to P1 and initiate major incident procedures
When new information reveals significantly greater impact, the Incident Manager must immediately re-prioritize and trigger appropriate procedures such as major incident management.
Question 5: Which document pre-defines escalation paths and contact lists for use during major incidents?
- Change Advisory Board charter
- Incident escalation policy and runbook (Correct answer)
- Service portfolio
- Asset management database
Correct answer: Incident escalation policy and runbook
An incident escalation policy and runbook pre-defines contact trees, escalation criteria, and response roles to ensure consistent and rapid escalation during major incidents.
Question 6: What is the primary risk of consistently under-prioritizing incidents at intake?
- Increased number of change requests submitted
- SLA breaches and unresolved business-critical outages (Correct answer)
- Overstaffing of the service desk
- Reduced number of problem records opened
Correct answer: SLA breaches and unresolved business-critical outages
Consistent under-prioritization leads to SLA breaches, delayed resolution of critical outages, and significant business impact that correct categorization could have prevented.
CIM CIM Incident Categorization & Prioritization 2
In a standard priority matrix, which combination results in the highest (P1/Critical) priority?