My previous manager recently left and during the interim between when he left and the new one started I was able to reduce my ticket queue from 270 to 160 and now it’s down to 135 and that’s with working currently tickets at the same time.
The ticket mix was a combination of research issues, projects and software help desk items.

My previous manager thought it looked good to take tickets out of the unassigned queue and immediately assign them, even if this meant it could be a month before someone actually looked at it.

I don’t think this was the best way to manage the work or the IT personnel.

Combine this thread with the one titled “The less obvious IT acronym – ADD” that I read this morning and it really makes you think.

We only get a few minutes, if that, to actually concentrate on 1 issue before being redirected to the next issue regardless of whether or not the first one has been resolved. I used to be very good at handling multiple items at the same time but it’s deteriorated over the years.

I hate the IT Hunt line phone line since it always interrupts current concentration on an issue but then I don’t want users getting into the habit of calling me personally for everything little thing.

The paragraph in this article about the efficient management of the help desk “Having a never ending queue of support issues is exhausting for the support professionals and it also means that no amount of staff is ever in an �??idle�?� state awaiting high priority items. Because of this, high priority items are either not addressed as quickly as they should be or else in-process items are neglected.” hits home big-time. The last sentence applies to me and I don’t like it one bit.

Thanks for the post and I’m going to keep it to hand to my supervisor if/when the company starts getting on IT about the help desk issues.

The goal of this article is to help IT managers and business people understand the critical differences between these two types of workers and not mistake one for the other.

if you have chosen IT services you need to be availalbe and reactive at all times and the pizza analogy is simply not suited for getting a fast efficient service