Define IT Support
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Hi Guys I'm trying to get a general definition for the term "IT Support" that is, what are the job roles of the IT Support staff at your work. Basically, I manage a group of developers and at times we are all required to do some level of IT Support. We hate it, but its a part of the job description so apart from pulling faces, theres nothing much we can do. However for a long time now, we have been providing what I think is administrative support, i.e hellping users with basic MS Word usage such as setting paper margins, setting page numbers on documents, placing images in word documents etc. We have a team of young administrators and an admin manager and I believe it is their responsibility to provide this level of support. Recently the admin manager approached one of my developers to split a word document into several pages, Im thinking WTF.:mad: To cut a long story short, I am preparing for war with my managers to dispute the definition of IT Support. Ive tried to find a general description of IT Support on the internet with no luck. My developers are having to stop working on their projects to do this level of support quite frequently and the stress is begining to show. Can you imagine, your trying to debug a script and someone comes and tells you, their PC is not working becuase - when they type something in the middle of a sentance it deletes everything infront of the caret. I almost had a fit when I heard that one. It was from the admin manager. If anyone can offer any advice I would greatly appreciate it. :)
Managers understand money. I'm assuming your developers earn more than the IT staff (hopefully :). As such I would break down what it costs for your developers to help with these rudimentary tasks vs. having a low level IT person do the tasks. You can try and work in the disruption aspect (ie it takes roughly 15min after a task switch to get back into the zone) to pad the "cost" of a developer doing the task vs. an admin person. Just some ideas.
Todd Smith
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Syed M Hussain wrote:
what are the job roles of the IT Support staff at your work.
Create layers of obfuscation between the person trying to get work done and the support staff. For example, create a web page for reporting problems that requires a password that people don't have unless they first go through a different IT dept. to get access. Once they have access, create a selection of a 100 or so different options, none of which describe in any meaningful way what the problem is that is being reported. Once the "ticket" has been submitted, because it is inevitably wrongly categorized, you can circulate the ticket to different IT dept's., moving it every 2-3 days, and updating the status of the ticket to "moved to so-so dept." Maybe a couple months later, the issue will land in the right dept., at which point you will be asked to provide further information as to the problem. That's the job role of IT Support. Marc
I'm not overthinking the problem, I just felt like I needed a small, unimportant, uninteresting rant! - Martin Hart Turner
Or better yet, create a tick system for these issues. Then hack it and redirect all emails to the admins.
Todd Smith
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Hi Guys I'm trying to get a general definition for the term "IT Support" that is, what are the job roles of the IT Support staff at your work. Basically, I manage a group of developers and at times we are all required to do some level of IT Support. We hate it, but its a part of the job description so apart from pulling faces, theres nothing much we can do. However for a long time now, we have been providing what I think is administrative support, i.e hellping users with basic MS Word usage such as setting paper margins, setting page numbers on documents, placing images in word documents etc. We have a team of young administrators and an admin manager and I believe it is their responsibility to provide this level of support. Recently the admin manager approached one of my developers to split a word document into several pages, Im thinking WTF.:mad: To cut a long story short, I am preparing for war with my managers to dispute the definition of IT Support. Ive tried to find a general description of IT Support on the internet with no luck. My developers are having to stop working on their projects to do this level of support quite frequently and the stress is begining to show. Can you imagine, your trying to debug a script and someone comes and tells you, their PC is not working becuase - when they type something in the middle of a sentance it deletes everything infront of the caret. I almost had a fit when I heard that one. It was from the admin manager. If anyone can offer any advice I would greatly appreciate it. :)
I agree with the definition of roles you have already attempted, we support the apps we have written, but then we have 6000+ staff. In a smaller org the lines are blurred, but if you have a "team" of developers then 1 of that team needs to be designated support person (most junior naturally, they get the crap jobs every time). Said person needs the tools to track and categorise support requests, office, admin and inftasrtucture should go to designated handler(s) and apps support end up with the developers. You then need to recognise the contribution this poor sod is making to your life with a few beers every now and then. Also you need to give him the authority to make decisions and you need to back those decisions. Our guy stood up to a pushy MD recently, the MD ended up getting slapped for breaking the rules.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity RAH
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Syed M Hussain wrote:
what are the job roles of the IT Support staff at your work.
Create layers of obfuscation between the person trying to get work done and the support staff. For example, create a web page for reporting problems that requires a password that people don't have unless they first go through a different IT dept. to get access. Once they have access, create a selection of a 100 or so different options, none of which describe in any meaningful way what the problem is that is being reported. Once the "ticket" has been submitted, because it is inevitably wrongly categorized, you can circulate the ticket to different IT dept's., moving it every 2-3 days, and updating the status of the ticket to "moved to so-so dept." Maybe a couple months later, the issue will land in the right dept., at which point you will be asked to provide further information as to the problem. That's the job role of IT Support. Marc
I'm not overthinking the problem, I just felt like I needed a small, unimportant, uninteresting rant! - Martin Hart Turner
You've been reading the BOFH haven't you? :)
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! Personal 3D projects Just Say No to Web 2 Point Blow
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Hi Guys I'm trying to get a general definition for the term "IT Support" that is, what are the job roles of the IT Support staff at your work. Basically, I manage a group of developers and at times we are all required to do some level of IT Support. We hate it, but its a part of the job description so apart from pulling faces, theres nothing much we can do. However for a long time now, we have been providing what I think is administrative support, i.e hellping users with basic MS Word usage such as setting paper margins, setting page numbers on documents, placing images in word documents etc. We have a team of young administrators and an admin manager and I believe it is their responsibility to provide this level of support. Recently the admin manager approached one of my developers to split a word document into several pages, Im thinking WTF.:mad: To cut a long story short, I am preparing for war with my managers to dispute the definition of IT Support. Ive tried to find a general description of IT Support on the internet with no luck. My developers are having to stop working on their projects to do this level of support quite frequently and the stress is begining to show. Can you imagine, your trying to debug a script and someone comes and tells you, their PC is not working becuase - when they type something in the middle of a sentance it deletes everything infront of the caret. I almost had a fit when I heard that one. It was from the admin manager. If anyone can offer any advice I would greatly appreciate it. :)
If you're considering a war, you might want to either study or enlist this guy: The BOFH[^]
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! Personal 3D projects Just Say No to Web 2 Point Blow
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Hi Guys I'm trying to get a general definition for the term "IT Support" that is, what are the job roles of the IT Support staff at your work. Basically, I manage a group of developers and at times we are all required to do some level of IT Support. We hate it, but its a part of the job description so apart from pulling faces, theres nothing much we can do. However for a long time now, we have been providing what I think is administrative support, i.e hellping users with basic MS Word usage such as setting paper margins, setting page numbers on documents, placing images in word documents etc. We have a team of young administrators and an admin manager and I believe it is their responsibility to provide this level of support. Recently the admin manager approached one of my developers to split a word document into several pages, Im thinking WTF.:mad: To cut a long story short, I am preparing for war with my managers to dispute the definition of IT Support. Ive tried to find a general description of IT Support on the internet with no luck. My developers are having to stop working on their projects to do this level of support quite frequently and the stress is begining to show. Can you imagine, your trying to debug a script and someone comes and tells you, their PC is not working becuase - when they type something in the middle of a sentance it deletes everything infront of the caret. I almost had a fit when I heard that one. It was from the admin manager. If anyone can offer any advice I would greatly appreciate it. :)
Syed M Hussain wrote:
I'm trying to get a general definition for the term "IT Support" that is, what are the job roles of the IT Support staff at your work. To cut a long story short, I am preparing for war with my managers to dispute the definition of IT Support. Ive tried to find a general description of IT Support on the internet with no luck.
Does it have electricity in it? If the answer is yes, then IT Supports this. This does also (According to some lusers) include the Speedo in their car, their electric pencil sharpener, their desk heater (Gets mighty cold in some office blocks of a morning) and their personal MP3 player... At least, that's how the lusers describe IT support...Personally, my definition is Something along these lines[^]
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Hi Guys I'm trying to get a general definition for the term "IT Support" that is, what are the job roles of the IT Support staff at your work. Basically, I manage a group of developers and at times we are all required to do some level of IT Support. We hate it, but its a part of the job description so apart from pulling faces, theres nothing much we can do. However for a long time now, we have been providing what I think is administrative support, i.e hellping users with basic MS Word usage such as setting paper margins, setting page numbers on documents, placing images in word documents etc. We have a team of young administrators and an admin manager and I believe it is their responsibility to provide this level of support. Recently the admin manager approached one of my developers to split a word document into several pages, Im thinking WTF.:mad: To cut a long story short, I am preparing for war with my managers to dispute the definition of IT Support. Ive tried to find a general description of IT Support on the internet with no luck. My developers are having to stop working on their projects to do this level of support quite frequently and the stress is begining to show. Can you imagine, your trying to debug a script and someone comes and tells you, their PC is not working becuase - when they type something in the middle of a sentance it deletes everything infront of the caret. I almost had a fit when I heard that one. It was from the admin manager. If anyone can offer any advice I would greatly appreciate it. :)
My definition is that engineers want to control things, those in IT want to control people. Another solution: "I don't know Word, I'm a developer." A real solution I just used with a friend of my wife: "Have you tried to actually use the help?" To which the answer was, of course, no. (My wife just now did this to me. She asked how to do something. I honestly couldn't remember so I said "I don't know." She thought I was being sarcastic, so I added, "Just click menus until you find something that looks like the right thing and try it. That's what I do.")
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Hi Guys I'm trying to get a general definition for the term "IT Support" that is, what are the job roles of the IT Support staff at your work. Basically, I manage a group of developers and at times we are all required to do some level of IT Support. We hate it, but its a part of the job description so apart from pulling faces, theres nothing much we can do. However for a long time now, we have been providing what I think is administrative support, i.e hellping users with basic MS Word usage such as setting paper margins, setting page numbers on documents, placing images in word documents etc. We have a team of young administrators and an admin manager and I believe it is their responsibility to provide this level of support. Recently the admin manager approached one of my developers to split a word document into several pages, Im thinking WTF.:mad: To cut a long story short, I am preparing for war with my managers to dispute the definition of IT Support. Ive tried to find a general description of IT Support on the internet with no luck. My developers are having to stop working on their projects to do this level of support quite frequently and the stress is begining to show. Can you imagine, your trying to debug a script and someone comes and tells you, their PC is not working becuase - when they type something in the middle of a sentance it deletes everything infront of the caret. I almost had a fit when I heard that one. It was from the admin manager. If anyone can offer any advice I would greatly appreciate it. :)
Usually I like getting these simple questions. That being said, I can relate. There's no easy answer to this. The management simply doesn't get it. This is a little like when they ask the employee being paid beaucoup bux to clean the kitchen because "we can't afford to have a cleaning crew do this all the time, besides you people made the mess". Ignoring the fact that you might be paying someone five times what you are paying the cleaning person to do the job, and the cleaning crew would actually do a better job at cleaning. I digress. You could lecture them about opportunity cost to having developers doing this. They won't listen. Fundamentally, they are stupid. Not ignorant. Stupid. You can't really fight stupidity with logic. You fight ignorance with logic. So you'll probably have to work around this problem rather than fighting it. If you lose your fight and get stuck then I'd put in a 'help desk' system and make every request for assistance go through that. Nobody gets help right away and nobody gets help without getting a ticket to track things. No exceptions below C-level. Not an expensive system. A cheap (if possible, open source) system. Then dev folks take turns being the guy in the barrel so the others can get work done without major interruptions. Encourage the dev people to send the person who needs help to the help desk system and let them know that "Bob" or whoever, is on duty. Even if Bob is at lunch. It's Bob's turn today, Fred will take it up tomorrow, and you negotiate on anything that has to be handed over- but its Bob's until it's done unless Fred accepts it. That sort of thing. If Bob is out of the office when it is his turn then it rotates to the next person to be "It". Everything as much by the book as possible. Everybody gets to talk about what they 'fixed' during their annual review. One of the reasons for a help desk system is to prove to management how much time this is sucking up from Dev. If you can quantify it, you might lose the fight this year but win it next year when management sees the dollar signs. Management doesn't believe something exists unless a number is associated with it. This is why you are having your fight with your managers instead of them just agreeing that you are right. Then there's the other, less constructive approach. If it were me, and I didn't want to do it, I'd make sure that the minute I sat down at their computer that they wouldn't get work done for the rest of the day. And neithe
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Hi Guys I'm trying to get a general definition for the term "IT Support" that is, what are the job roles of the IT Support staff at your work. Basically, I manage a group of developers and at times we are all required to do some level of IT Support. We hate it, but its a part of the job description so apart from pulling faces, theres nothing much we can do. However for a long time now, we have been providing what I think is administrative support, i.e hellping users with basic MS Word usage such as setting paper margins, setting page numbers on documents, placing images in word documents etc. We have a team of young administrators and an admin manager and I believe it is their responsibility to provide this level of support. Recently the admin manager approached one of my developers to split a word document into several pages, Im thinking WTF.:mad: To cut a long story short, I am preparing for war with my managers to dispute the definition of IT Support. Ive tried to find a general description of IT Support on the internet with no luck. My developers are having to stop working on their projects to do this level of support quite frequently and the stress is begining to show. Can you imagine, your trying to debug a script and someone comes and tells you, their PC is not working becuase - when they type something in the middle of a sentance it deletes everything infront of the caret. I almost had a fit when I heard that one. It was from the admin manager. If anyone can offer any advice I would greatly appreciate it. :)
Hello, Syed, First, I admit to not reading all the responses to your post (short of time today), so I may say something someone else has already said. The only thought that occurs to me is that you might think in terms of "guerilla action" rather than "war." For example : suppose you carefully document for a one month period every minute of your developers' time that is spend on the kind of support you don't think you should be doing; do up spreadsheet showing the amount of time spent per day, the developer's salary who did the support work, and make a report showing how much of the company's money was spent on the support. You can accompany that with a second report that tries to estimate how much revenue the company lost by the interruption of your developers' work. Address a summary statement to senior management with a request for an increase in your operating budget to cover these "off topic" support consultations. The idea that the company is "wasting" money is, imho, a more powerful one in terms of getting management's attention than a "frontal assault." Just a thought. best, Bill
"Many : not conversant with mathematical studies, imagine that because it [the Analytical Engine] is to give results in numerical notation, its processes must consequently be arithmetical, numerical, rather than algebraical and analytical. This is an error. The engine can arrange and combine numerical quantities as if they were letters or any other general symbols; and it fact it might bring out its results in algebraical notation, were provisions made accordingly." Ada, Countess Lovelace, 1844
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Hello, Syed, First, I admit to not reading all the responses to your post (short of time today), so I may say something someone else has already said. The only thought that occurs to me is that you might think in terms of "guerilla action" rather than "war." For example : suppose you carefully document for a one month period every minute of your developers' time that is spend on the kind of support you don't think you should be doing; do up spreadsheet showing the amount of time spent per day, the developer's salary who did the support work, and make a report showing how much of the company's money was spent on the support. You can accompany that with a second report that tries to estimate how much revenue the company lost by the interruption of your developers' work. Address a summary statement to senior management with a request for an increase in your operating budget to cover these "off topic" support consultations. The idea that the company is "wasting" money is, imho, a more powerful one in terms of getting management's attention than a "frontal assault." Just a thought. best, Bill
"Many : not conversant with mathematical studies, imagine that because it [the Analytical Engine] is to give results in numerical notation, its processes must consequently be arithmetical, numerical, rather than algebraical and analytical. This is an error. The engine can arrange and combine numerical quantities as if they were letters or any other general symbols; and it fact it might bring out its results in algebraical notation, were provisions made accordingly." Ada, Countess Lovelace, 1844
Thanks alot guys, you have made me see sense. The fact is nothing will ever change in my company. I think it's time to move on like somebody mentioned. Im going to go and install Windows 7 now, hopefully if its any good it will cheer me up. Have a nice weekend every one :)
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Hi Guys I'm trying to get a general definition for the term "IT Support" that is, what are the job roles of the IT Support staff at your work. Basically, I manage a group of developers and at times we are all required to do some level of IT Support. We hate it, but its a part of the job description so apart from pulling faces, theres nothing much we can do. However for a long time now, we have been providing what I think is administrative support, i.e hellping users with basic MS Word usage such as setting paper margins, setting page numbers on documents, placing images in word documents etc. We have a team of young administrators and an admin manager and I believe it is their responsibility to provide this level of support. Recently the admin manager approached one of my developers to split a word document into several pages, Im thinking WTF.:mad: To cut a long story short, I am preparing for war with my managers to dispute the definition of IT Support. Ive tried to find a general description of IT Support on the internet with no luck. My developers are having to stop working on their projects to do this level of support quite frequently and the stress is begining to show. Can you imagine, your trying to debug a script and someone comes and tells you, their PC is not working becuase - when they type something in the middle of a sentance it deletes everything infront of the caret. I almost had a fit when I heard that one. It was from the admin manager. If anyone can offer any advice I would greatly appreciate it. :)
So there are quite a few replies to this so apologies if I repeat some of what others have said. Having worked in this world of IT Support for going on 10 years and also working very closely with Dev teams, here is pretty high level view on things. You have two main areas of IT, Development and Operations. Development: Building systems for the purpose of either making or saving a company money etc. Operations: Making sure those systems are up and running (IT Operations is a very broad area and includes Desktop, Networking, Server admin AND support). Support generally falls under Operations, however there are different levels of support, of which Development is a part of. Here is what I hope is a clear definition of those levels. Level 1 (Help Desk) - IT Operations junior responding when "customers" have a problem with something IT related. "Customers" in IT terms includes your internal staff. Level 2 (Junior Operations) - Or in some cases the ONLY Admin / Network / Desktop guy. The guy the 1st Level guys turn to when they can't fix it. Level 3 (Senior Operations) - The guy the 2nd level guys go to when they can't figure it out (I like the guys who point the 2nd level guys in the right direction and in turn spreading the knowledge). Level 4 (Development) - The supplier of the system! If something is that broken, these guys are going to have to be called in. Now Level 1 can blur with Level 2 a bit when the junior guys aquire more knowledge and skills. The same can be said of Level 2 and Level 3. This tends to be the career path. So now that you have read all that, the short answer: You and your team are Development. Unless the problem is with the system you developed, it's not your problem! Something to use in your argument would be the $$ amount it costs the company everytime your team get pulled away on a 1st or 2nd level support problem. And we are not just talking about the cost of the dev teams time, we're talking the potential loss of revenue because a product is not complete or late being delivered etc. It's all about the Benjamins! P.S. Your admin manager who doesn't know what the insert key does isn't an Admin, they are a Manager. My old directory of IT wasn't that bad, but came out with some good ones. However they ran the IT Department extreamly well.
TimmyFox