P1

 Priority 1 (P1) is Amazon’s highest level of incident or task severity within internal operations, tech support, and issue escalation processes. A P1 typically signifies a critical failure or disruption that severely impacts customers, sellers, operations, or system stability.

Examples of P1 situations:

• Major site outages (e.g. Seller Central login failure, Buy Box disappearance)
• Inability to place or fulfill customer orders
• Critical issues affecting payments, POs, or product listings at scale
• Severe API downtime impacting thousands of automated workflows
• Security incidents or data integrity threats

Amazon’s response to P1s:

• Immediate alerting of engineering, operations, and leadership teams
• Initiation of incident war rooms or escalation bridges
• Targeted toward rapid diagnosis and resolution (often with 24/7 support)
• Post-resolution Root Cause Analysis (RCA) and preventive action planning

Why P1 classification matters:

• Drives resource prioritization across departments
• Helps Amazon maintain customer trust and platform stability
• Can escalate attention to VP- or director-level visibility
• Sets strict resolution SLAs (often measured in minutes or hours)

💡 Example: A Vendor Central outage preventing invoice submissions during end-of-month close is flagged as a P1 - triggering immediate system triage.

In short:
P1 (Priority 1) is Amazon’s highest severity classification for urgent issues - reserved for business-critical incidents that demand immediate cross-functional response.