How IT teams manage and prioritize incoming requests
Last updated: May 2025
IT teams manage a constant flow of requests from across the organization — from evaluating new tools to implementing software changes and improving internal processes. At the same time, you are responsible for leading your own initiatives, such as maintaining infrastructure and enhancing security.
Balancing these demands is hard. Ad hoc requests can quickly consume your time and energy. But strategic work does not move forward on its own. You need a way to access, prioritize, and act without losing sight of the bigger picture.
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This guide outlines how IT teams can structure their intake process to manage incoming requests more effectively. This helps you meet immediate needs across the organization and keep advancing your strategic priorities.
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How to gather and manage incoming requests
A formal intake process makes it easier to manage the flow of incoming IT requests, like onboarding new employees, granting access to internal tools, or troubleshooting system issues. Without one, it is easy to get overwhelmed — and harder to give each request the attention it deserves.
Start by establishing a single place for people to submit what they need. An ideas portal like Aha! Ideas works well for this. It acts as a centralized request center, giving you a clear view of what people need and making it easier to prioritize asks from multiple teams (such as HR, finance, or customer support).
With a portal in place, define a consistent workflow:
Triage by timing: Identify the work's due date: right away, next month, or further out. Sorting requests this way helps prevent a growing backlog of unprioritized work.
Route to the right team: Requests often touch different parts of IT (infrastructure, security, development, or support). Use categories or automation to assign work to the right owner quickly.
Promote items to the roadmap: Once approved, turn requests into planned work. This might be an activity for a smaller task or an epic for something larger. Schedule it in the right release so nothing sits idle.
Connecting intake to your team's planning process offers visibility and control. You can take on the right work at the right time without sidelining strategic initiatives.
Related:
Evaluate and score requests
You cannot say yes to everything. IT teams have to weigh incoming requests against limited time, resources, and strategic goals. This is where a consistent evaluation process helps — especially when requests vary widely in scope and urgency.
Use the product value scorecard in Aha! Ideas to quickly assess incoming ideas and identify which ones are worth pursuing.
Scoring frameworks provide structure. Whereas product teams often prioritize based on customer value and strategic alignment, IT teams typically consider factors like effort, security, compliance, operational efficiency, and cost. Even simple categories — such as "minor" vs. "major" or "now" vs. "later" — can bring clarity.
Consider this scenario: The finance team requests a trial of a new budgeting tool. At the same time, IT is planning a companywide identity management upgrade. Both are legitimate needs. Both take time. But the upgrade addresses a known security gap and strengthens compliance across systems, making it the clear priority. A scoring system helps surface that value comparison so decisions are easier to explain and defend.
You do not need to overengineer your scoring framework. Start with criteria that reflect how your team thinks about work, then adapt as your needs evolve.
If you are looking for ideas, the following resources offer helpful starting points (even though they are written with product teams in mind):
Balance incoming tool requests with strategic IT work
Requests from other teams are just one part of the picture. IT also leads critical internal work like system upgrades, security initiatives, and long-term planning for the technology stack. These efforts require focus — and they should not take a back seat to every new tool request.
This is where strategic evaluation matters. Each new tool request needs to be considered in context:
Will it integrate with existing systems?
Does it meet security requirements?
Is it supported by the vendor and worth the cost over time?
A technology gap analysis can help guide these decisions. It provides a clearer picture of what the organization truly needs and where new tools or process improvements will have the most impact. For example, marketing might request a new social media analytics tool. But if the existing stack already supports similar functionality, the better path might be improved integration or training — not a new vendor evaluation.
Your idea management process should reflect this kind of thinking. Promoting the right requests and deferring others shows the full scope of IT priorities and helps everyone understand how decisions are made.
Bring visibility to IT decisions
A clear request process does more than keep work organized. It gives others visibility into how IT makes decisions. When teams understand what is being prioritized and why, it builds trust and strengthens collaboration.
Tools like Aha! Ideas help you communicate decisions automatically. You can link the original requester to the work, set them as a watcher, and notify them when the status changes, making it easy to keep people informed and complete the feedback loop. You can also follow up directly to ask questions or share updates, even when the answer is "not now."
This kind of transparency reinforces that you evaluate every request thoughtfully. And it also shows that IT is not just responding — you are leading critical work that powers the business forward.
FAQs about how IT teams prioritize requests
A centralized intake process is key. It helps you collect, prioritize, and act on requests more consistently — while giving others visibility into how decisions are made. Learn more about how to gather and manage incoming requests.
Use a consistent scoring system to evaluate all incoming requests. Urgency is just one factor — strategic fit, security, and available resources matter as well. A clear framework makes it easier to explain decisions and thoughtfully review every request.
Yes. Aha! Ideas gives you a single place to capture, review, and prioritize requests from across the organization. You can assign categories, score requests, promote them to your roadmap, and automatically notify requesters when the status changes.
