GSquared (1/6/2011)
I dug around with a search engine a bit, and "sev3/sev4" refers to software support "severity level". There aren't standard definitions, but it appears that the higher the number, the lower the importance/impact of the incident, with 3 and 4 being, generally, stuff that barely matters or is merely affecting performance, without affecting accuracy or stopping the show.
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You're correct in your searching: Sev1-6 (usually) are usually associated with SLAs (Service Level Agreements). Depending on the location Sev 1/2 are usually catastrophic business failures, with 2 being a vendor based item that the team has little control over.
As you mentioned, 3/4 are usually performance based issues that are affecting the company but are not affecting profit or customer relations. One example I remember offhand was our shipping tracking was down at one location. It was important, but we could still do business online. Think standard 'trouble ticket'.
These are usually encoded in SLA contracts when you've got a provider doing IT support or front end maintenance (IE: Running the online business site for a Fortune 500) and different severities have different requirements for resolution time and penalties for falling outside that resolution window. They'll also have different escalation impacts.
IE: Sev 1: 24/7 support: Call 1 DBA, 1 Developer, 1 System Adminstrator, 1 Business Analyst, immediately. At all times until closed, the conference line must be populated by a member of these groups.
For comparison:
Sev4: Leave the DBA team an email for the morning to put it in their queue.
Hmm, that rambled a bit.
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