Triagedriven

Triagedriven is a workflow design in which triage assessments determine the order and method by which work items are addressed. In this approach, incoming items—such as incidents, feature requests, or support tickets—are evaluated through predefined triage criteria, including severity, business impact, urgency, effort, and risk. A triage team or triage lead assigns a priority level and decides whether items should be escalated, deferred, or assigned to a specific team. The result is a triage backlog or queues that guide execution, with regular re-triage when new information arrives.

Core elements include formal triage criteria, recurring triage sessions or standups, defined roles, and governance rules to prevent bottlenecks. The process often integrates with existing delivery systems such as Kanban boards, issue trackers, and incident-management platforms, enabling fast re-prioritization as conditions change.

Applications span incident response, software development, IT operations, and customer support. In incident management, triagedriven prioritizes issues by business impact and service level objectives; in product development, it aligns backlog items with value and risk.

Benefits include faster response to critical issues, improved resource allocation, and clearer alignment with business objectives. Challenges involve subjectivity in triage judgments, potential for backlog growth if triage is under-resourced, and the need for good data quality. Metrics commonly tracked are triage cycle time, distribution of priorities, MTTR, and backlog aging. Overall, triagedriven emphasizes making the triage decision the primary driver of work scheduling.