IT Staffing Studies

[NYR]

Hello,
I am researchiing the long argued "Staffing Studies" idea and how to properly staff your IT department; more specifically, the Help Desk and Field technicians.

I have been looking all over and found little information on IT staffing studies. I would like to hear everyone's feed back on their situation and if there are any good articles or websites out there that have information on IT staffing ratios and how to calculate them.

I supervise a small help desk and field support unit consisting of five people. We support approximatley 3000 users, 1950 computers plus over 1500 printers and other misc items. We have 28 remote locations with the furthest one approximatley 240 miles out.

All this equates to:
560 users per technician
1030 hardware items (computers, monitors, PDAs, printers)
Plus extended drives to locations. Approximatley 2500 of the users are off site.

Is this extreme?
Thanks in advance.

 

[CajunCenturion]

There are far too many variables in play to provide a reasonable answer to "Is this extreme?"

What do your users do? How much support do they require? What is your application environment? Are you providing application support? How often do you need to travel to the remote locations? How much of the remote support can be done from the home base?

Are you getting the job done? Are the user in need of more than you can provide? Are your technicians under-worked or over-worked?

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Good Luck
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As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

 

[svanels]

I would add:
1) Do you have a lot of turnovers?
2) Is your staff regularly calling in sick?
3) Are you getting angry calls from your clients, complaining about the attitude and services delivered by your staff

5) Is your staff complaining about you?
but that is not valid, everybody complains about the boss

Steven