All 1 entries tagged Systems Thinking

Different kind of enterprise IT support?

I just helped a colleague improve their productivity with an IT tip. It feels good to do so, because I know this will have a lasting, albeit small, impact. Thinking wider, I'm sure everyone could do with a tip or two a day related to their work. This, it would be hard for me to justify, because in the process, doing so for my team alone, I wouldn't get my job done! It also dawned on me that because I and others do this kind of help, and the issues we solve and tips we provide, never actually enter an IT helpdesk call logging system, and as such are unknown to them.

We often look to better network infrastructure, or hardware upgrades to equipment to boost improvements in ‘speed’ or productivity in enterprise IT, but I think an equally important aspect may be overlooked. Let me propose a radical idea:

A model of IT support where support staff actively came and sat down with individuals going about their daily roles, using their daily computer. An IT solution ‘health assessment’ as it were conducted at the desk, with the PC setup the user uses daily, asking questions like “what’s the most frustrating thing about your computer?”. “What tasks do you loathe, and why?” and to get them to demonstrate it, could a) help support improve/optimise people’s most common/critical working procedures, even showing people things they don’t know they don’t know, and taking the real issues exist either to the department (e.g. for a second monitor where effective, or a label printer) and take IT issues that need to be fixed in the system, back to those who can make it happen, the service owner teams, to act on the system.

This is something I’ve not seen before, have you? I'd be keen to hear your experiences.

We often call ITS when we’re at the end of our tether, no other options, and we wait until support arrives. I don't think IT services frontline staff/floor-walkers/helpdesk often see users in the best of moods, so it may have positive impacts on their work environment too.

This, I believe, would be a systems thinking approach.

Steve Ranford : 08 Dec 2010 18:19 |  Tags: Idea Musings Systems Thinking |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem