User Request / Support - How Does Every One Else Do It

[brand5880]

Guys,

I was hoping that some one may be able to point me in the right direction. I know that there are a few people in the form that are IT managers, and I am guessing they have the same sort of problems.

How do you track every thing going on? I manage an Automation Department; it is a hybrid department (IT, Controls, and Manufacturing Engineering). We create and modify production lines for produce a wide verity of products. I have nine divisions my team supports (15 different buildings), all extremely different. We receive 4-5 new system / change requests, 8 - 10 new urgent maintenance items (bugs or outages), and have 5 team members with each having 2 - 4 items they are working on weekly. Currently we utilize two spread sheets to track this and there is a lot of double or triple entry.

Break Down of current Process

Change / New System Requests –
The Manager or assistant manager of the division affected fills out a request form. Some time these are typed or hand written. This form includes the following info, authorizing manager, contact person, division, location, description of change wanted, ROI info, what the change is to (equipment wise), and priority. These forms are then in turn faxed, mailed, or emailed to us. Then a secretary enters this data into an Excel spread sheet.

Then I go in the spread sheet put estimated time, estimated cost of needed equipment, any concerns, prioritize based on other project. and if it is a rush job then the person assigned.

Then once a week the Director of our company goes through and priorities the projects and adds any that he thinks need to be added.

Then through out the week we update the status with time left, time worked, and when completed. If we complete an item, we have to fill out a form (which all the data is in the Excel work book) and email it to every one involved. Then when we deployed it we need to re email this form updated to say deployed.

Bugs / Outages –

We go into a program called Magic, this program was meant to track computer hardware programs. Our IT department has locked down this program to the point that there is no easy way to track problems on a single piece equipment. It was also not meant to get the detail we are looking for.

-------------------------------------

The double entry comes it to play in two ways, every thing the secretary is entering exactly what is on the form into the excel spread sheet. Also if a bug requires a code change, then it is on both the the spread sheet in in the web passed program called magic.

We have looked at a number of other solutions to combine all this in to a single process but have not see any we care for. We are hoping for a web based application. I also looked at DataStream MP2 and 7i. 7i is to costly, and MP2 would require us to create a web page in house to customize it as much as we wanted. We have found some open source applications, but most would require some major modification.

Does any one have any ideas? Thank you ahead of time for any help you could be.
_________________
Brandon

 

[Scott24x7]

Brandon,
This is really FAR beyond a "project managment" question, but not sure where else here you may want to ask such a thing, aside from the the ITIL forum... fundamentally what you need is that: some standards implemented and a model for continuous process improvment. ITIL descibes these top level elements as:

Incident Management: (Fix the customer, not the problem). This is the "break" and should focus on the immidate goal of what the customer is trying to accomplish. (For example, it's not about fixing their printer, it's about getting them the print out for the meeting they are going to in 10 minutes).

Problem Management: All problems are incidents but not all incidents are problems... These are the repeated "broken" issues that recur time and again... the ROOT cause needs to be identified, and a solution implemented.

Change Management: How do you handle change

Release Management: How do you manage implementation of new/fixed functionality?

These are tied closely to your CMDB (Change Management Database) and CDB (Configuration Data Base). Any change MUST be reflected here.

From what I can see, this is what you are trying to improve. There is no "One page" answer for this. This is hard work, and you will need to really dig in and understand the issues you have.

You may find it helpful to implement a system that will track this stuff for you in a better way... I would recommend at least focusing initially on two things: 1) Your CMDB, and 2) Start at the start... Incident Managment.

It's hard to say though, you're real root problems may reside in your Change or Release processes. Understand these better first. In any case the WORST thing you can do is nothing. Pick a spot, dive in, and start sorting it out.


Best Regards,
Scott

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, and no simpler."

 

[baltman]

That's what BPM software is for. My company is implementing Fuego. It looks like it will be a major effort to roll it out, but if done right is should help manage whatever you'd need.

My department is still in an early evaluation phase but hopefully I'll be able to report on our initial implementation by end of year.

Brian

 

[buitenhek]

I am certain you are following CPI (Continuous Process Improvement) quality endeavors. The 3 items to stress are 1-remove variations (double entry, rephrasing of problem, etc)
2-Remove or offload projects that do not fit your profile 3-Determine what your management wants to satisfy them

I have designed many Excel (even market a few) based spreadsheets and find it somewhat limiting. The spreadsheet is limited to "calculations" but is clumsy at database manipulation. Possibly you may need to integrate a relational database like Access (limited to 10 simultaneous inquiries) or SQL (more robust). The problem entry/resolution can be looked at in many different ways via Access without having to recode.
"Leap and a net will appear"
Regards
Peter

Regards
Peter Buitenhek
ProfitDeveloper.com

 

[grooke]

There is a program called 'Tackit' which is used for computer maintenance. It looks appealing and should not be too much hastle to see what it does. I'm not sure whether this is wbe based.

Other bug fixing software may provide what you want.
Rational Clearquest. May NOT be web based.
Atlassian's Jira. Is ONLY Web based.
are two that spring to mind.

I would start with Jira first and see what you think.

http://jira.atlassian.com

Gil

 

[grooke]

I have just reminded myself about Jira.

It is easy to use.
In is not as pretty as I think it could be.
You can incorporate it for non-web use'

It is worth signing on for an account at the web site of the previous comment.

It is best to start on

http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/features/

Open the 'Create' page and take the 2 minute video. It gives very much the flavour. It wont sell chocolates but it does do a good technical job at tracking issues.

Gil