**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.