Managing Role Conflicts

[RBSTR]

Hi

I am a software developer but over the last year or so have taken on a role of handling support calls and managing a team of 4 people (3 of who are new to the company)

I find it difficult to plan and commit to 'quality' development time against the peak and troughs of handling support calls and dealing with team management matters.

Ideally I want to spend x number of days a week commited to new development projects but find it tricky to achieve this.

I guess a solution would be to lock myself away for these days but I still want to be approachable by my team.

I guess another solution would be to get my team to be more accountable for my tasks so I have to chase them less.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

 

[BocaBurger]

I work in suppport. This type of job has no schedule. You can't control when clients have problems. Make the long term person the "Team Lead" if capable and off load the on call work to the team.



BocaBurger
<===========================||////////////////|0
The pen is mightier than the sword, but the sword hurts more!

 

[Dollie]

Are the 3 new people fully trained? If so, give each member of the team specific responsibilities such as who will handle what types of support. If not, I would do nothing but ensure they are fully trained by the end of next week. As you are the manager, consider yourself Level 2 support, the next level beyond your team. Have scheduled time for development and keep a calendar that is available to your team for viewing and scheduling. Instead of trying to get away from your team for a few days of quality developing, try to have some quiet time daily for a few hours of developing and schedule it so people know you are not available.

Have some "busy work" ready for your team when the calls drop off and they are busy doing nothing more than throwing their pencils at the ceiling.

Hope this helps,
D

 

[johnpoole]

delagate and empower... or spend forever swimming upstream in a whirlpool.. i have the same type problems.. my job is 60 hours a week plus training 2 techs on a dozen different app's... one mistake in a nothing script and 10,000 users all try to call a 20 man help desk before i can compile.

get as much of the routine as possible off your desk.. i work on my short list 2 hours a day.. after that i am on hot spots.. that short list gets longer and the to-do list is never on page one.. boils down to time management, and the ceo gets a 20 million dollar bump, we lost money last year and can't give raises... and gas is going to hit 4 bucks before my vacation

john poole
bellsouth business
columbia,sc

 

[mikeydidit]

I have one thing that might help. In our PC support group and applications group, I have created an ACD (automated call distribution) group for their calls. Basically you log in when you what to help with the support calls. Then you can log out when things slow down and work on other projects. I also have the supervisor’s different buttons on their phones to be able to see what the group as a whole is doing. (Who is logged in, if calls are waiting to be answered and how long). This might be something you can get with the phone guys about or let me know and I can help.

"Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something."
(Plato)

 

[eyeswideclosed]

imo making a programmer handle support calls is always a mistake, they did that to me once and it was awful, nothing against support people, they do a very difficult job, but it's not what I signed up for.