You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more
You havent actually worked in IT have you?
Oh right, is this where you tell me that you really are special little lambs who really do need insulating from the horrid world?
Need to use a ticketing system, our current open jobs sits around 20, some longer, some shorter, but not projects generally as they are outside of that
Some jobs sit in there for weeks due to the nature of them, without a ticketing system those jobs would be forgotten and never completed
Sorry, IT you don’t have greater GDPR risk than HR, Finance, even Sales.
I'm struggling to think of anywhere I've worked where HR didn't have their own office for confidentiality reasons. No-one seemed to think that was unusual or suggested they leave their desk every time there was a query, and they didn't have a storeroom's worth of hardware to put somewhere.
So yeah, this thread has actually become "10 reasons why we can't be like every other office worker" By the staff who in reality are just like every other office worker, but who really believe they can't behave like every other office worker becasue; reasons that are special that unless you've been in IT you couldn't possibly understand.
Uh huh.
Where's the picture of sceptical house when you need it.
There are lots of roles where an open plan office is detrimental to work management. Not just (some) IT roles.
Of course, there are many roles where open plan is beneficial, preferable, more sociable, more collegiate, more productive... but assuming that applies to all scenarios would be odd. And then so would an attitude of... "it makes your job harder, suck it up"... assuming the aim is getting the work done.
without a ticketing system those jobs would be forgotten and never completed
Becasue you can't work a calendar?
Seriously every reason/excuse you're coming up with that you think makes you a special case, just sounds more and more like special pleading.
It’s making you sound more and more like an idiot.
I am guessing they have a grudge against the IT support staff since for some odd reason they find themselves at the back of the queue when needing support. Perhaps one day they might connect that to their lovely attitude towards IT.
Becasue you can’t work a calendar?
How is putting things in a calendar really significantly different to putting things in a ticketing system?
I think anyone, no matter their role/department, going from working separately to open plan will bring up some apprehensions - I don’t think it will be as bad as what you think and you and your colleagues will work it out.
RM.
How is putting things in a calendar really significantly different to putting things in a ticketing system?
It would make the backlog review calls hilarious.
I am also not sure how we would mark its progress from design=>dev=>qa=>uat=>prod.
Maybe thats why an open plan office is needed so we could pass a paper calendar around.
I used to have two actual offices (closable doors rotting cycle kit under tables, the lot...) and a PA and everything (to do typing believe it or not...) Now I hot desk in open plan across two offices with home working, and with a bigger job and a much bigger team (albeit with a flatlining 'career'). Our IT folks seem to cope okay too, sometimes working in direct daylight, and operate a ticketing system to manage direct demand. It's just how folks work these days.
@Alan1977 I get where you are coming from. I used to be an IT bod in a similar role, in what was a smallish company. We had our own office, because when you've got multiple job on the go with PC/Server/Printers in bits, a 1 person cubicle doesn't cut it, and booking out a meeting room so you can have enough space, every time you need extra space, then clear it all away, etc, was impractical. On top of that, a lot of what we did in IT was problem solving, and we'd be bouncing ideas off one another, finding solutions and working in a collaborative way that doesn't function in an open plan environment.
I speak from experience, as the same thing regarding the office move, happened to us. In an open plan office it was difficult for us as a department and disruptive to other groups in the office. I hated it. Luckily I left 18 months after the move. All can say is, Good Luck!
It would make the backlog review calls hilarious.
No, I know. But it's absurd to say that we only have ticketing systems as a crutch for IT and say you could just put things in a calendar instead... which effectively turns your calendar into a (crappy) ticketing system.
So you're saying you are all special lambs that need special protection then? Is that right? That you can't cope with the requests from your colleagues without them brandishing forth the mighty ticket stub hewn from the very living limb of the special icon on the desk top..?
Cool, cool, as long as we all understand...
NickC the comments re ticketing system
its literally essential
the alternative would be setting up a sperate calendar myself and boss have access to, and every time there was an issue , manually filling the info in, or copy paste, add all the customer fields the like the user, hardware identifiers etc etc, it would take longer to populate the calander than complete the job.
so what would happen? my inbox would then be a backlog of tickets, that needed processing even before i could start fixing the issue
So what id do instead is get my developer head on for a few months and come up with automating everything through Outlook, and create... a ticketing system, which someone already has done to a higher standard and with far more functionality
remember, I'm keeping track of 350+ pcs/phones/laptops.. 250 odd users and all their issues, I'm not simply helping Jim in accounts total up an excel column
A ticket system is essential
we used to not have one when we didn't have a budget
people went without getting their issues sorted
Our IT dept has been forced to man an in-person helpdesk, which means we can now go down and get a new mouse / keyboard / power supply / batteries immediately rather than it going into a ticketing system for 48-72 hours and us having to resort to Cougars stone and chisel until the replacement shows up.
I wondered if their sartorial choices were the result of being limited to a basement somewhere for years, like a separate branch on a Darwinian evolutionary tree on some remote island that favored 90's Nu-metal black shirts with flames on them, but now paired with a grey beard and Birkenstocks.
In the same way everyone in engineering eventually buys a 5-pack of light blue shirts from M&S.
Hands up, I don’t want to be in the main population at all, with HR directly behind me, my boss has already said to use his office as it will be empty 90% of the time, but surely there is some legitimate arguments against an IT person potentially dealing with sensitive information, or GDPR related info, for example me taking staff mobile numbers to help them with MFA etc etc? help me formulate a good argument that would stand up 🙂
As opposed to the proles in gen-pop doing the same conversation on the other end of the phone?
We'd all like our own office, but we're not getting one 😂
What the IT bods fail to grasp is that, in every office, there is that one person who actually knows how to work Excel and has a screwdriver in their drawer.
This unsung hero gets constantly disturbed from their real, non IT related job and actually fields about 90% of the IT related issues in any organisation.
There is no ticketing system for this Idiot Filter. They are omnipresent
and has a screwdriver in their drawer.
And a knife??
How is putting things in a calendar really significantly different to putting things in a ticketing system?
Call priority. SLAs and automatic alerting when they're being reached. Ticket progress updates. Call status. Previous call history. Asset tracking and trend analysis. Categorisation. Current call owner. Transfer of call ownership. Agent time utilisation. Control over who has visibility of what information (vital if you're dealing with calls from outside the business, you don't want customers seeing internal communication). Statistical analysis for Management reports. Etc etc.
How are you supposing the information gets into the calendar in the first place? With a ticket management system the onus is on the user, with a shared calendar the Tech would do nothing but log calls all day.
What happens when the business grows and there's 1,000 users? 10,000? You're going to have to pull out a braindead workaround hack that you've been heavily reliant on for years in order to implement it properly like you should have done in the first place. It is simply the wrong tool for the job and many correct ones exist so why wouldn't you?
So you’re saying you are all special lambs that need special protection then? Is that right? That you can’t cope with the requests from your colleagues without them brandishing forth the mighty ticket stub hewn from the very living limb of the special icon on the desk top..?
Can you point on the doll where the IT Technician touched you?
its literally essential
I'm literally taking the piss to pass the time on a very boring Teams call.
Although this little number
remember, I’m keeping track of 350+ pcs/phones/laptops.. 250 odd users and all their issues, I’m not simply helping Jim in accounts total up an excel column
I wouldn't reveal to the finance team if I were you, if you want your pay to be right...ever again. Jus' saying
Call priority. SLAs and automatic alerting when they’re being reached...
Yes, I know. That wasn't my point.
Surely if you don't want to be in with 'Gen Pop' you need to trick them into thinking you'll make their new, pretty open plan office look terrible.
So if your current IT space is tidy, fill it with as many half assembled broken workstations, monitors, servers, printers, bundles of Misc cables and as big a pile of non-functional mice/keyboards as you can manage. Oh and Don't forget to have lots of empty boxes half blocking a fire escape.
Tell them you need at least four "test benches" (Full sized desks with twin monitors, peripherals and lots of random unconnected cables)...
This is all just the opening gambit, you want them to find an alternative room to hide you and the unsightly crap they need to believe you come with. Without a reason to do so though they'll just treat you like a normal employee and pop you next to chatty Doris from Accounts.
Our IT dept has been forced to man an in-person helpdesk, which means we can now go down and get a new mouse / keyboard / power supply / batteries immediately rather than it going into a ticketing system for 48-72 hours and us having to resort to Cougars stone and chisel until the replacement shows up.
This is another 'economies of scale' argument. If you can pop down to stores and request a new mouse I'd say that's a sensible way of doing things, the red tape isn't worth it. If they expect to pop down and request a new laptop then not so much.
I implemented exactly this system way back when I was in Support in the 1990s. Rather than requesting low-value items like mice on an individual basis which took days, we got a box of them out the warehouse, stuck it in a cupboard along with a box of Jiffy bags. A caller needs a new mouse, it was in Outgoing Post in minutes.
But it becomes less viable when the company grows and you need to keep stock of sundries at every branch, when that runs low they come back to Logistics for a bulk replacement order and that needs ticketing and tracking.
What the IT bods fail to grasp is that, in every office, there is that one person who actually knows how to work Excel and has a screwdriver in their drawer.
On the contrary. At a previous employer we were central IT for our site and a handful of remote offices. Each office had an IT Champion, our (volunteered) primary contact as someone who wasn't completely useless and could be trusted to do things like read error messages. This was back in the days where things like remote desktop access weren't commonplace. They were invaluable.
If you are responsible for hardware, just make sure you explain how noisy diagnosis can be.
I guarantee if you use an electric screwdriver wherever possible you will be found somewhere away from everyone else. My cheapo bosch is particularly whiney and really grates on people.
Because you won't find a legal reason to not be in an open plan space. My organisation has to conform to many security audits due to the sensitivity of the stuff we do. The infrastructure / desktop team are in the open plan with everyone else and it works fine. There is not a trail of people going to their desk throughout the day because of a rigid adherence to a ticketing system.
I've got a very noisy mechanical keyboard
a penchant for noisy music
unfortunately we don't really have any local servers anymore.
you need to trick them into thinking you’ll make their new, pretty open plan office look terrible.
Trick?
This popped up on Facebook a little while back, it's from my Time at the aforementioned 1990s Support role.
I commented, "I'm pretty sure that's my old desk." An old colleague replied, "It's absolutely your desk. Your chair's gone missing, it's covered in bits of computer, and you're not at it."
(An aside for fellow Techs: Note the stockpile of IBM Model M's under the drawers.)
I work in a global engineering organisation, offices in 50 countries. Current (UK) office is open plan, circa 200 desks (prob 100 people in.) 3 observations. HR do not have their own office. The guy (and his team) who looks after nuclear security for UK operations does not have his own office. IT who administer systems capable of running nuclear defence work do not have their own office. All open plan. All this above board and in line with national security policy and best practice.
Your GPDR argument is screwed.
and has a screwdriver in their drawer.
And a knife??
And a queue of perplexed colleagues who have no idea how they're expected to eat apples and cheese without IT support
HR directly behind you is the problem. Mainly because they will a) jibber jabber incessantly b) start accumulating evidence
yeah, but it's HR. They'll lose the evidence or use it against the wrong person a couple of months late.
they will a) jibber jabber incessantly
Who's your HR rep, Mr T?
And a queue of perplexed colleagues who have no idea how they’re expected to eat apples and cheese without IT support
🤣🤣🤣
Who’s your HR rep, Mr T?
I ain't getting in no open-plan, fool!
And a queue of perplexed colleagues who have no idea how they’re expected to eat apples and cheese without IT support
We established on the other thread that only bona-fide Alpha males carry knives around in their daily life.
Can someone create the Venn diagram for IT support professionals and knife carriers? It's looking like the international dialling prefix to me.
Most 'open-plan' offices mean a massive room with 200 of the lower paid staff chucked in together, like some kind of bear pit. Getting an office is then a reward for being promoted.
The reason for open plan in the first place was to foster teamwork and creativity. Walls were a barrier. This is great, if an architect designs an inspiring workplace and there is some added value to being creative and team-working.
We established on the other thread that only bona-fide Alpha males carry knives around in their daily life.
Can someone create the Venn diagram for IT support professionals and knife carriers? It’s looking like the international dialling prefix to me.
Then you run into the leatherman conundrum. Not big enough to satisfy the knife boys, geeky enough for the IT bods but a dangerous weapon in the eyes of the law 🙂
Having IT out in the “open” is a total PITA. People walk up all the time with “can you just…?” requests, you get treated as a one stop shop for “I need a new [IT thing]…”
It’s just constant disruption.
This.. 'drive by requests' are really disruptive... **** off and log a ticket so it can be prioritized correctly. If you are unable to log a ticket (connectivity issues etc), then pick the phone up and it'll be fixed there and then on the phone, & a ticket will get logged on your behalf and progressed accordingly.
Having people walk up with ad-hoc requests/ random rants all the time is not scalable, and if there's no ticket logged, it makes analytics for incident management/problem management & service improvement impossible if stuff keeps getting fixed 'under the table/off the record'
the Venn diagram for IT support professionals and knife carriers? I
That's too complex a relationship for a Venn diagram - I'm thinking ceremonial elvish swords for one thing.
Can someone create the Venn diagram for IT support professionals and knife carriers? It’s looking like the international dialling prefix to me.
+ ?
😁
if there’s no ticket logged, it makes analytics for incident management/problem management & service improvement impossible if stuff keeps getting fixed ‘under the table/off the record’
It also means that it looks like you've done nowt all day. If your KPI is "tickets closed" and you've run around fixing 57 "have you got a minute?" issues that day then the office will love you right up until you get sacked for underperforming.
I believe the OP needs to request a "build room" or "server room" - that's where our desktop support guys usually hide out, picking off the easy jobs from the ticket system so they look busy...
😉
This.. ‘drive by requests’ are really disruptive… **** off and log a ticket so it can be prioritized correctly. If you are unable to log a ticket (connectivity issues etc), then pick the phone up and it’ll be fixed there and then on the phone, & a ticket will get logged on your behalf and progressed accordingly.
Struggling to see the difference between someone walking up and phoning up - eye contact, I guess.
It also means that it looks like you’ve done nowt all day. If your KPI is “tickets closed” and you’ve run around fixing 57 “have you got a minute?” issues that day then the office will love you right up until you get sacked for underperforming.
Also this... my last boss, who was a new hire, actually said to me one day 'I don't understand what it is you do all day' and there were noises about putting me on a performance improvement plan.
I resigned not too long after that.
Disruption from what? That’s what they are there for.
From experience it is a bit of a pain having people walking up when you also have a queue of problems and requests in the call logging system you are trying to work through. But it's how it is. I don't recall security ever being an issue.
if there’s no ticket logged, it makes analytics for incident management/problem management & service improvement impossible if stuff keeps getting fixed ‘under the table/off the record’
We logged walkups in the system.
Open plan may work for a traditional "office" type environments but imo creative industries and software developers work better with quieter single flavour workrooms. But pretty much every office build after 1970 was open plan.
Make everyone put support requests in via Jira and ban walk-up cases.
Struggling to see the difference between someone walking up and phoning up – eye contact, I guess.
And
We logged walkups in the system.
Might work if you have a dedicated 1st line support person(s) who do nothing else... in reality you often have to wear many hats in a service delivery environment, 1st line, 2nd line, incident management, problem management, analytics and monthly reporting to various stakeholders... some of these functions take time without interruption.
And if you have a major incident to deal with, a p2 or a p1 then literally eveything has to stop to deal with that issue exclusivley... and then there's the aftermath of a p2 or p1 incident once it's fixed... root cause anaysis reporting, that feeds into problem management and change management processes.
"but I only want a new mouse/there's something wrong with my spreadsheet fomula!" I hear you cry! get in the sea.
Our new build will be open plan for a max of 160ish. It will be truly terrible.
Mind you we should be inspired because it's a learning space and not 8 classrooms. I'm biting my tongue as I'm going for promotion. Once that's done, then I'm going to properly vent.
Then you’re just encouraging them.
Encouraging people to ask for help when they need it is a good thing.
“Happy to sort that for you, but I’ll need a ticket logging.”
Or “Happy to sort that for you, I'll just log a ticket first.”
IT people should be locked away in an office, they all sound like moaning ****s 😅
Then you’re just encouraging them. Why would they ever log a ticket if they know you’ll do it for them?
Sorry for being truly tedious, but our guys just say "yeah we can give you a headset to replace the one you've left at home in time for your meeting in 10 minutes, you utter utter numpty [they generally only think the last bit]. Can you just log it?" and then point at a laptop on a desk where you put in your email and click a box. Er, and that's the extent of the drama.
I know. I know. I have no humorous anecdotes to enliven this scene of day to day corporate life. Maybe someone went "hmph" once, it's possible?
Or “Happy to sort that for you, I’ll just log a ticket first.”
No.
Times that by 20 in one day, and it throws your entire workoad off for a whole week, then you get account managers and product owners bitching at you because service report x wasn't delivered on time.
The only time service delivery should be logging a ticket for you, is if you physicaly can't do it yourself, locked account/no connectivity etc.
IT people
Are not your personal assistants/hand holders/botty wipers.
Times that by 20 in one day, and it throws your entire workoad off for a whole week, then you get account managers and product owners bitching at you because service report x wasn’t delivered on time.
Who's time costs more?
Open plan offices isn't the end, they're not that bad, been in them for a few years now, had all the hissy fits at the start with bosses complaining about being in with the minions, security issues would be a nightmare (work in MoD), no privacy, etc, etc, reality is you're all going to be in the same environment, in your own little clusters, doing the day job, you're all covered by the same company policy as well, so misconduct and so on will make people aware of what they can and can't do.
As for doing non work stuff, it gets done, at the beginning folk put so much effort into hiding it, now i walk through an floorplate and you just see folk openly watching their phones, chatting, etc, but it's recognised as normality in the work day, of course if it's taking up most of peoples days it gets noticed and stamped down on pretty quick.
Anyway, just accept you'll have an acclimatisation period, same as everyone else, you'll find your happy medium, same as everyone else, you'll survive, maybe even thrive!
Who’s time costs more?
Or even who's job is it to offer IT support?
No chance mate. All modern workplaces are open plan. I don't love them, or hate them tbh. I do miss my old office but those days are gone. There's far far far more sensitive information than IT being processed in open plan offices.
Who’s time costs more?
Funny you should ask that...
The answer is, it's impossible to quantify without a correctly logged incident, in order to assign it the correct priority in line with business needs.
For example if the CEO can't acess thier email, that would be assigned a higher priority than Colin from accounts who's struggling to send a document to the office printer.
The answer is, it’s impossible to quantify without a correctly logged incident,
you win. You get your office... 🙂
Sounds like you just need to catch up with the 21st century and adapt to a perfectly normal work environment
There’s far far far more sensitive information than IT being processed in open plan offices.
Then the company would struggle to maintain thier ISO certifications, and other industry compliance/security related certifications - which many clients insist on as a base level of competence at enterprise level, before they will even look at a company for a project/service contract.
That's another huge time sink for IT departments...annual external audits related to information secuity.
Who’s time costs more?
We're often so wound up in our own little worlds that we forget that this is really about service delivery. And that is subject to the same design thinking forces as everything else
Desirability, Viability, Feasibility
The sweet spot varies between services, but the folk doing the delivery don't tend to decide where that sweet spot is.
I have a love hate relationship with ticketing systems, except SNow which I just hate, but from a BI/BA perspective they can be useful.
Agreed, it's never black and white, and it depends on the individual business priorities.
If the boss’s office is free 90% of the time = your office
So after 4 pages the one thing we all agree on is that no-one wants to share an office, open plan or otherwise, with the weirdoes from IT?
Yep, conclusion.. IT and normals do not want to share the same space
However, this is a normal scenario... and getting used to it it will be fine
re walk ups and phone ups.....
I rarely answer the phone, If i do it better be critical, or my response is to log a ticket and we will get round to it
and yes, i will be using the office as and when, and i think the rest of the time i will probably sit with a headset on all day.
Who’s time costs more?
Irrelevant both will be waiting while the ticket is being logged.
Who’s time costs more?
Jesus.
He can log a ticket as well.
He can log a ticket as well.
🤣
Irrelevant both will be waiting while the ticket is being logged.
Not usually.
'Oi my mouse isn't working'
vs tapping away for at least 30 seconds whilst that stuff is entered into the ticketing software.