[lopsa-discuss] Interruptions coverage...

[Frank Thommen]

Benjamin Feen wrote:
> Time Management for System Administrators describes a pretty common practice:
> having a rotation of people fielding interruptions for the team.
> 
> How does your site handle this?  What hard lessons or subtle points have been
> addressed as your process matures?


In the group I work previously (an universitary IT Support Group which 
handles system administration and end user support for Solaris, Linux, 
Windows and Mac OS, ca. 12 persons) we practised this method.  The 
"dispatcher" - a daily rotating job - was responsible for interruptions 
(aka Helpdesk) and assigning incoming mail requests in the ticketing 
tool to the responsible admin.

We practised this with students and sysadmins doing this job.

For a certain time, we hired students to this job.  But once they had 
enough knowledge, they normally left and the next student came (normally 
after some months).


With "insiders" (i.e. sysadmins) doing this job, the most critical 
problem was, that on busy days, you had a whole day interruption of your 
actual work.

For the customer (and for the sysadmins) having each day an other person 
being the contact can be annoying.  When the sysadmins did this 
rotation, even the location of the person changed each day.  That didn't 
work out at all and was a real nuisance for the users.

An other critical point was documentation:  Dispatcher A started a 
process, did not document it and the next day dispatcher B didn't know 
what was going on or to which sysadmin the case had been forwarded, when 
the customer contacted helpdesk again to ask about his/her request.

Additional problems arised, when contact-through-helpdesk and direct 
contacts were intermixed.


My personal lessons were:

  * Do not rotate if you can do other

But if you have to, then

  * Be very strict on good documentation of each step
    of each case

  * Let dedicated persons (no novices) do the
    helpdesk, not the sysadmins

But if you have to, then

  * Have only *one* place/office for direct contacts
    (rotate only people, not places)

Generally

  * Let the helpdesk person initiate the contact with the
    responsible sysadmin and do not allow direct contacts
    unless in emergency cases

  * Have good and well defined procedures and communication
    channels, make them known to everybody, print them out in
    bold red letters and pin them on each door of each sysadmin
    office (that's a general advise)


frank