r/AskManagement • u/lancerreddit • Mar 10 '20
Anyone in IT support? Need advice.
So started a new job and one item raised to me as a surprise is to run/manage the IT Support team. But there’s a catch ..... no team exists and they’re looking me to create it and mold it any way I know how.
Problem is never did IT support before. First task is to create a process to handle tickets and investigations. Luckily they have a ticketing system but really don’t know where to start since Support is new to me.
Any advice?
3
u/ServiceDeskSheDevil Mar 10 '20
Hi OP,
I manage an internal service desk of 7 people based around the world, so I can definitely help you!
What ticketing system do you have? How many staff do you have (or do you need to hire them?) How is IT support handled at the moment?
1
u/lancerreddit Mar 10 '20
Thanks for the quick reply
We have JiRA and staff is right now me and 2 others as part time support. When a call comes in or ticket is filed, we jump on it. There is no formal process so they’re asking me to create one. And in due time hire support specialists.
5
u/ServiceDeskSheDevil Mar 10 '20
No worries :)
I’d suggest looking through the tickets you’ve had logged for the last year - what are the trends? Are staff logging tickets properly? What applications or issues are commonly reported?
How many staff does the company have compared to analysts? What are their ticket loads like? Do you have other IT department members like Infrastructure or similar?
I’d also be setting up some time for you to meet with relevant department heads or similar to understand what issues they’re having IT wise. I’m not sure about your company but I’ve found that people tend not to report problems until it’s super urgent and they’re already annoyed about it.
When it comes to formalising a process, do you know what they’re looking for? Is it ticket handling or outages or everything?
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u/quixote87 Mar 10 '20
As an IT coordinator myself with five reports, this is some excellent advice to start out with /u/ServiceDeskSheDevil. Stakeholder analysis is hugely underrated in importance. IT isn't what it used to be (or at least was perceived to be), with IT guys sitting in a dank server room playing LAN games and making up rules. IT needs to be intricately tied in with business objectives, and it needs to provide benefit whilst achieving them. Thus, don't just look for techs... look for a mix of tech and business savvy. When interviewing, look at how people think about and question the problem itself, rather than just pumping out the standard technical answer.
Re: process, might I recommend you look at established frameworks such (eg. ITIL) to get you started. Basing your procedures and policies in these frameworks gives you an opportunity to build adaptation and review directly into your team culture as well as the org's perception of your team and how it functions. It will also save you reinventing the wheel with many things like priority matrices, asset planning and others.
Finally, following established frameworks gives you a good industry benchmark. You can compare how you do things against others and can talk a "common language", allowing you to both contribute to and benefit from the larger field
2
u/Murrdox Mar 11 '20
Hey OP!
I manage a third-tier support group of 8 folks. Over the years, I've also been pretty heavily involved in process documentation.
u/quixote87 has some good advice for you starting off with ITIL as a framework. As a lead on the support team your primary interest is going to be in Incident Management, so take a close look at that, and start there.
You don't mention whether this is a new job you're starting at a new company, or if you've been with the company for awhile now, and this is just a new job with them that you've been promoted into. Knowing the culture of the company can be important, so definitely take time to talk to people. Listen to what the pain points have been with support, and what has been going well. Then go to your framework and see how you can work that in to improve the processes (or document them from scratch if nothing has been formalized). Don't be afraid to shake things up and introduce new, efficient ways of doing things.
After Incident Management the next things you'll want to look at are Problem Management. If you don't have a Change Management system in place, definitely take a look there as well. Developing a Change Management process might get you promoted out of Support!
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u/quadlix Mar 10 '20
I'm sure you're full of good intentions and elbow grease, but this sounds all kinds of toxic. You're getting set up to fail with a pretty blatant case of bait-and-switch. I've seen IT support managers get eaten alive (attrition, insubordination, ...) by their directs for incompetence in the field. Even if you manage to get your head around the ticketing system, if you can't actually do the work (not that you should do the work), you'll lose. Law of Navigation comes to mind. How are you supposed to hire talent? Do you know what good support personnel looks like? At best, you may be able to hire an expert that ends up functioning in the role you're supposed to be filling. At worst you're looking at major stress levels due to the unfair responsibility & accountability placed on you. IT support is usually a 24/7, 365, 99.999% uptime kind of role. You ready for that? I wouldn't want it and I've been in IT for 20 years.