Program Management

Issue Log

An Issue Log is a Program Management tool that contains a list of ongoing and closed project issues. It’s used to organize current issues by type and severity in order to prioritize them and assign responsibility. A Program Manager (PM) may be used to handle thousands of issues across multiple projects. An issue log is also a good tool use as lessons learned as it shows a history of problems that were encountered on a project.

Below is the basic information needed in an Issue Log:

Basic Information: 

  • Issue reference number (ID): Typical number to identify different issues.
  • Issue name: Issue’s name.
  • Description: Briefly describe what the issue concerns.
  • Issue author: The person who raise this issue.
  • Parties: all the people involved in solving the issue.

Issue Categories:

  • Issue type: what knowledge domain the issue belongs to. (E.g. IT infrastructure, IT application, etc.)
  • Issue priority: it determines which issue is the most urgent and should be solved first. (E.g. the priorities may encompass Immediate, Soon, Later, etc.)
  • Issue severity: how bad the consequence would be if the issue is left unsolved. (E.g. the severity may encompass Vital, Major, Medium, Minor, etc.)

Issue Date Information:

  • Date raised: when the issue is raised.
  • Date assigned: when the issue is assigned.
  • Deadline: when is the final date to get the issue settled.
  • Date resolved: when the issue is actually solved.

Issue Status:

  • Current status: the current status the issue is within. (E.g. Investigating, escalated, resolved, etc.)
  • Actions updating: Actions performed before issue is resolved (List all the actions according to dates.)
  • Resolution: The final resolution to settle the issue

AcqLinks and References:

Updated: 7/16/2017

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