Help me define and write a scope for my job!
October 30, 2012 11:53 AM   Subscribe

Help me plan a Tier I HelpDesk implementation/startup/Scope

I started recently as a new Helpdesk manager at a large worldwide corporation HQ'd in NY. Their IT sucks! No really, for a company this size that's about to go IPO (they're pretty well known) their IT services are pretty scary in terms of service, support staff and lead times. My company was contracted to come in and analyze what they're doing, determine the gaps and then plan and implement the following:

-Outsourced Tier 1 India call center (5-6 people) covering 24/7 365 support
-Local On-Site Tier 1 (2-3 people either on site or at my home office) covering normal US hours.
-Remote NOC center (this is another guys responsibility but he's here doing the same gathering of info I am)

I'm at the location for 2 months, (started last week) to study the processes, systems and current procedures in place. So far I've sat with the 4 Deskside guys who do tickets. They break down like this.

-2 cover the main office of 1500 employees, pretty much mostly ticket work
-1 is strictly system builder, for breakfixes, new builds, upgrades
-1 covers the alternate office about 150-175 people
-There are ALSO 2 guys in a CA office and 2 in a NJ office. Their load is not quite as high as the NY team and I've considered load-balancing them (esp the west coasters with their time difference) to help out the home offices.
-One lady in the home office takes calls and logs tickets, but is not technical at all. This is also NOT her job function.

The business need from the company is that these guys are not only overloaded but handling very basic work, (Account unlocks, silly little user errors), that really should be best handled by Tier I, and their work should be more Tier II/III. The Tier I call center and team I'm to set up are to alleviate a large amount of the "busy" work they're doing. As well the Server and Network teams are being forced to handle low level Helpdesk tickets to manage the load as well instead of focusing on their own sector-specific projects and work.

--I've also met with the Desktop Engineering team member, who is in charge of the system images they deploy, to find out the standard software/platforms etc. There really isn't much documentation. They currently use HP ServiceDesk but are planning a move to Remedy Force by the end of the year.

-I've met with the "pseudo Helpdesk manager" last week to discuss the state of things including her opinions on how things are now, what the problems are and what could be improved. Got a lot of information from her. She believes a full rebrand and overhaul of the Helpdesk system is necessary.

This is my my basic plan so far shadows ITIL methodologies of a ServiceDesk:

-All requests will go directly to the India/Onsite Call-Center or be sent to the Universal Helpdesk Email queue
-Tickets will be categorized by Request Types, Major and sub type
-Call center experience or Knowledge Database in Remedy will be utilized to solve Tier I Incidents.
-If a Tier I incident cannot be solved, it will be routed to the respective Tier II/III group's ticket queue.
-All tickets will be properly noted, (even when passed on), and relevant info, tracking and screenshots added to comments.
-Tickets will only be resolved, (even if canceled or self-resolved), and the techs will check in after 3 days of leaving a ticket in Pending to ensure completion. Then they can be Resolved and closed out.
-SLAs will not be strictly used at first. The company has none in place currently! This will be something down 2-3 months that will be implemented once we really get some metrics on the call/incident volumes.
-Larger trending issues will be monitored by Tier II/III to investigate root causes. (A HUGE issue is the repeat of issues people have and the problems only being patched and not fixed)

I believe we'll need 2-3 people on site here to handle Deskside calls during US hours, as well as 5-6 people in the India call center. (8pm-8am calls, likely in 2 shifts 8-4 & 4-8) Eventually the Call center will support more than just North America but more of their Europe and worldwide offices as well.

I'm having some difficulty in writing up a scope document for implementing this, as it's really my first time doing that.

Suggestions?
posted by PetiePal to Computers & Internet (5 answers total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
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posted by tgrundke at 12:03 PM on October 30, 2012


I don't know if there's a more typical way to write up a scope document in your workplace, so maybe an example from another project would help? I think your basic plan bullets above are a great start. I would definitely include a visual representation of the same information (a flow chart).

Personally, I think it's helpful to explore the information from different perspectives - the lifecycle of a ticket, the job description and day-to-day tasks of a Tier I Outsourced Help Desk representative, same for local, etc. If you write out all of these, it will avoid any ambiguity, so I would include them in the document.

Another example of this level of detail - if your goal is to determine root cause of trending issues, you might want to define what qualifies as a trending issue (like more than 5 tickets) and indicate that there will be a weekly meeting to discuss them.

I would also include key performance indicators, how they will be measured, when these KPIs will be evaluated and if applicable, what adjustments will be made.

I'm not an expert on this, but just some ideas based on similar projects in which I've been involved.
posted by beyond_pink at 1:05 PM on October 30, 2012


Response by poster: That's a good point. I actually have detailed out, (in outline format for now) the flow of tickets/info but I have been planning on getting it into a Visio diagraw or flowchart.

I've so far studied the:

-lifecycle of a ticket
-End user experience
-Experienced/shadowed Deskside support members on their daily work.
-Handled a few tickets mySELF to see first hand

Good point on trending issues, I need to define that but it's likely 5-10 tickets within a given range.

KPIs will eventually be the SLA, (Service Level Agreement) we'll set up for times to handle Non-Issue, Low Medium, High and Critical level tickets. This has to be determined more by the ticket influx and metrics a bit later on. I think early on though will be maybe how many tickets are received per resolved per day.
posted by PetiePal at 1:22 PM on October 30, 2012


Would re-evaluating their ticketing system itself also be on the table? Remedy is a solid solution that has been around for a long time, but for having easy access to actionable intelligence, perhaps something like Spiceworks in a multi-site configuration would be worth looking into? It can tie the tickets to assets which could help cut down on dupes and added time to the troubleshooting process. Another option, if there has been any investment into Microsoft's System Center already, would be to look into SCSM (the first 20 minute video is worth a watch). SCSM however would be a substantial undertaking if the company has not already implemented an AD topology between offices.

From what I can tell from the information you've given so far, it feels to me that they really need more access to "actionable intelligence" (please excuse the buzzword..it's the best I can think of at the moment). They need to be able to access information about an asset quickly, and have the tools necessary for a fast turnaround on the incident. Think of Remedy (or any basic ticketing-only system) as living in the paper and pencil age compared to what's out there today that fully integrates. (Spiceworks is one of a few that can do this...it's definitely the cheapest all-in-one solution and has a very large community that helps support it).

In short, I think their Helpdesk software itself plays a role in setting the current support paradigms...some of which they'll need to break out of in order to do a complete overhaul.
posted by samsara at 6:08 AM on October 31, 2012


Response by poster: Unfortunately they're decided on RemedyForce and are already QA'ing it.
posted by PetiePal at 11:19 AM on November 8, 2012


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