The numbers game A global engineering company outsourced its hardware maintenance. The contract stated that prioritization, and therefore target resolution times, would be based on the number of configuration items (CIs) affected. One day a printer failed and was duly reported. It was allocated the lowest priority, with a target of five days because it was a single printer. What was not appreciated, however, was that this was not an office laser printer but a factory printer that printed barcodes to show which spare parts were packed in each box. With no way of indicating which was in the boxes, they could not be packed, so after 24 hours the production line was closed down, and all the staff members working on it were all sent home! It took another 24 hours before senior management realized what was happening and the financial loss that was being incurred. In this situation, the outsourcer had followed the contract, but those involved in negotiating it had neglected to consider prioritization criteria beyond a very simplistic approach. (Steinberg, 2011: 78