9 ms·

The thing that kills me about the ticketing systems is that they are often put into place in a way that is locally efficient but does not make sense globally.

by mlac 5y ago

The thing that kills me about the ticketing systems is that they are often put into place in a way that is locally efficient but does not make sense globally. For example, an application owner might have to submit a ticket to request an upgrade once a year (or when a new OS is supported). What often happens is that the application owner now has to know about, find, and correctly understand a form that they see once (or less) per year. That work has been offloaded from a single team (measurable impact to efficiency) to immeasurable shadow work for others in the organization. A form that would take 1 minute of effort from the team that runs the upgrade to fill out and track, because they are in it all day, ends up taking a half hour, cut across multiple starts and stops due to other similar interruptions. This becomes pervasive (book your own travel with this system, book your own PTO here, track your time here, fill out tickets for this system, use the help desk ticketing system to request an application installation) and ends up eating a huge chunk of employee time doing unfamiliar overhead tasks on systems optimized for the team doing the work and not the customer. I think we are getting to the point where all of the systems that were designed to take away the need for administrative assistants may once again require an assistant to navigate efficiently.

jerome-jh 5y ago
Great insight! It literally happened in my company where the system to order physical goods is so complicated and ugly. Now a secretary handles feeding and tracking requests in this system. BTW our time tracking tool is a company wide motivation killer that costed 300k€ and does not auto-fill holidays.
- thesuitonym 5y ago
  >BTW our time tracking tool is a company wide motivation killer HINT: They all are.
  - pantalaimon 5y ago
    With cryptic overly specific tasks and one that ends up being the 'catch all' for everything that doesn't fit one of the narrow categories?
    - staticautomatic 5y ago
      You should see law firm timekeeping. It can be mind-blowingly labyrinthine.
    - abakker 5y ago
      40 hours a week spent on "General and Administrative". All 40 hours spent in the system, entering the 40 hours, thus the timecode is correct.
  - hnick 5y ago
    I used to enter 15-30 minutes a day on my timesheets for doing timesheets. It was honest but felt rebellious.
    - KSteffensen 5y ago
      This is the only way to go. If these numbers are ever actually used for something, maybe somebody will realize that the timesheets system can be improved.
spaetzleesser 5y ago
“What often happens is that the application owner now has to know about, find, and correctly understand a form that they see once (or less) per year.” That’s the worst. I have several processes I do once or twice a year like booking travel or submitting documents to our document management system (worst system ever). Each time it takes me forever to figure out these tasks because I forgot from last time how works. Or the UX has changed in the meantime. It would save huge amounts of supposedly expensive engineering time if we had somebody who did this full time.
zmmmmm 5y ago
> all of the systems that were designed to take away the need for administrative assistants may once again require an assistant to navigate efficiently Made me laugh. My org has a completely automated online self-service travel booking system that even includes dedicated support from a corporate travel agent - and I recently needed a single flight booked for a day in another city (about the simplest travel you can do) and somebody "loaned" me their PA to do the booking because it takes much time and knowledge to do it right. Part of the problem is that the org has implemented a gigantic set of strict rules about what kinds of flights can be booked to save money. So it can be quite hard to select the right flight that won't get knocked back further downstream or alternatively navigate through the forms to justify why you aren't selecting a compliant flight...
- _carbyau_ 5y ago
  It is exactly the extra rules, inevitably poorly communicated, that aren't hard coded into the form that make these anxiety inducing to navigate. I am here, procrastinating on one form right now. I have left myself this week to get to stage one( of three).
- stretchwithme 5y ago
  I wonder how much the company would save if they just gave you a budget for the trip and let you make the arrangements yourself on your own time and keep the difference. I trusted Amazon to book me a simple flight for an interview and I wound up with the absolute worst seat on the plane. The only thing that saved my 6'2" frame from being crushed into a corner was the kindness of a stranger who gave me their seat on the aisle. I know I can do better on my own!
  - zmmmmm 5y ago
    I assume there is some tradeoff with some kind of out of control stuff / abuse that happens by some minority people that cuts in if this is not managed. I feel like organisations should be leaving that to line management rather than controlling it through blunt policies, but I can see how from the top level there is a perception they need to enforce stuff like this. The real problem is that the abuse can often be measured and quantified while the cost of inconvenience or chilling effect on activity can't be, so I always think the costs likely are not weighted appropriately in whatever assessment is done.
hnick 5y ago
> the systems that were designed to take away the need for administrative assistants may once again require an assistant to navigate efficiently This is something that I've lamented over too. Infrequent interactions and setups take so long to do, the people who do it every day don't see a problem because it's easy but it's not a core competency for the rest of us. We need a community liaison role in internal teams that we can reach out to for a guiding hand. No, our sales staff don't know how to fill out your form about getting a new mail subdomain set up, no matter how easy they'll get something wrong and waste your time anyway. Why not walk them through it?
- mlac 5y ago
  I’ve been bumped into SLA hell when incorrectly filling out a form as well. Go fill the form to make the request - it’s got a 3 day SLA so it shouldn’t be a problem. Day 3 - form rejected due to missing a small detail / something they could call me about. Day 4 - I see the notice the form is rejected and either a) have to resubmit and wait 3 more days or b) escalate because now this is an emergency.
cratermoon 5y ago
A lot of medium-to-large organizations used to have dedicated administrative staff, not just for senior management, but for everyone. It was good because the people in the admin pools were experts at navigating the organizational structures. They did it every day, all the time, for everyone, so they knew the tricks. In the interest of cutting labor costs, those jobs were cut, and self-service systems like the ones you describe became the standard. I've been around long enough to remember a time when, if I needed to travel for work, someone made all the arrangements, and just handed me tickets and an itinerary. I was really junior at the time, it was just how travel was done. Now I'm pretty senior, but not senior enough to have my own assistant. I get paid a lot more, too. But employers seem to think it's more efficient for me to spend a day figuring out the corporate travel portal to plan and book my trip than to pay an expert to get it done in an hour or so.
- Apofis 5y ago
  Use Jira, make your own bookings (etc), and submit reimbursement requests or have an assistant and earn quite a bit less... hmmm.
  - alexjplant 5y ago
    Are the savings from not hiring assistants being passed on to rank-and-file employees via salary or distributed to shareholders and the C-suite? An employee's salary doesn't magically go up because their burdened rate goes down. Let's also not forget the fact that if you're in contracting/consulting it's more lucrative for you to charge the customer for a technical person's expensive time spent on administrivia than it is to hire additional labor and bill them for "the help".
    - cratermoon 5y ago
      Let me clarify: my salary didn't go up because the company fired all the admin assistants. My salary is higher now because I'm a senior engineer. What they pay me and all the other engineers for is our programming ability, but they also pay us to do admin self-service. If there truly was an overall cost savings attributable to reduced headcount (and I'm skeptical), I don't know where it went. I do know that for accounting Reasons, public companies love to show reduced personnel costs on their annual report.

by mlac 5y ago

jerome-jh 5y ago

Great insight! It literally happened in my company where the system to order physical goods is so complicated and ugly. Now a secretary handles feeding and tracking requests in this system. BTW our time tracking tool is a company wide motivation killer that costed 300k€ and does not auto-fill holidays.

thesuitonym 5y ago
>BTW our time tracking tool is a company wide motivation killer HINT: They all are.
- pantalaimon 5y ago
  With cryptic overly specific tasks and one that ends up being the 'catch all' for everything that doesn't fit one of the narrow categories?
  - staticautomatic 5y ago
    You should see law firm timekeeping. It can be mind-blowingly labyrinthine.
  - abakker 5y ago
    40 hours a week spent on "General and Administrative". All 40 hours spent in the system, entering the 40 hours, thus the timecode is correct.
- hnick 5y ago
  I used to enter 15-30 minutes a day on my timesheets for doing timesheets. It was honest but felt rebellious.
  - KSteffensen 5y ago
    This is the only way to go. If these numbers are ever actually used for something, maybe somebody will realize that the timesheets system can be improved.

spaetzleesser 5y ago

“What often happens is that the application owner now has to know about, find, and correctly understand a form that they see once (or less) per year.” That’s the worst. I have several processes I do once or twice a year like booking travel or submitting documents to our document management system (worst system ever). Each time it takes me forever to figure out these tasks because I forgot from last time how works. Or the UX has changed in the meantime. It would save huge amounts of supposedly expensive engineering time if we had somebody who did this full time.

zmmmmm 5y ago

> all of the systems that were designed to take away the need for administrative assistants may once again require an assistant to navigate efficiently Made me laugh. My org has a completely automated online self-service travel booking system that even includes dedicated support from a corporate travel agent - and I recently needed a single flight booked for a day in another city (about the simplest travel you can do) and somebody "loaned" me their PA to do the booking because it takes much time and knowledge to do it right. Part of the problem is that the org has implemented a gigantic set of strict rules about what kinds of flights can be booked to save money. So it can be quite hard to select the right flight that won't get knocked back further downstream or alternatively navigate through the forms to justify why you aren't selecting a compliant flight...

_carbyau_ 5y ago
It is exactly the extra rules, inevitably poorly communicated, that aren't hard coded into the form that make these anxiety inducing to navigate. I am here, procrastinating on one form right now. I have left myself this week to get to stage one( of three).
stretchwithme 5y ago
I wonder how much the company would save if they just gave you a budget for the trip and let you make the arrangements yourself on your own time and keep the difference. I trusted Amazon to book me a simple flight for an interview and I wound up with the absolute worst seat on the plane. The only thing that saved my 6'2" frame from being crushed into a corner was the kindness of a stranger who gave me their seat on the aisle. I know I can do better on my own!
- zmmmmm 5y ago
  I assume there is some tradeoff with some kind of out of control stuff / abuse that happens by some minority people that cuts in if this is not managed. I feel like organisations should be leaving that to line management rather than controlling it through blunt policies, but I can see how from the top level there is a perception they need to enforce stuff like this. The real problem is that the abuse can often be measured and quantified while the cost of inconvenience or chilling effect on activity can't be, so I always think the costs likely are not weighted appropriately in whatever assessment is done.

hnick 5y ago

> the systems that were designed to take away the need for administrative assistants may once again require an assistant to navigate efficiently This is something that I've lamented over too. Infrequent interactions and setups take so long to do, the people who do it every day don't see a problem because it's easy but it's not a core competency for the rest of us. We need a community liaison role in internal teams that we can reach out to for a guiding hand. No, our sales staff don't know how to fill out your form about getting a new mail subdomain set up, no matter how easy they'll get something wrong and waste your time anyway. Why not walk them through it?

mlac 5y ago
I’ve been bumped into SLA hell when incorrectly filling out a form as well. Go fill the form to make the request - it’s got a 3 day SLA so it shouldn’t be a problem. Day 3 - form rejected due to missing a small detail / something they could call me about. Day 4 - I see the notice the form is rejected and either a) have to resubmit and wait 3 more days or b) escalate because now this is an emergency.

cratermoon 5y ago

A lot of medium-to-large organizations used to have dedicated administrative staff, not just for senior management, but for everyone. It was good because the people in the admin pools were experts at navigating the organizational structures. They did it every day, all the time, for everyone, so they knew the tricks. In the interest of cutting labor costs, those jobs were cut, and self-service systems like the ones you describe became the standard. I've been around long enough to remember a time when, if I needed to travel for work, someone made all the arrangements, and just handed me tickets and an itinerary. I was really junior at the time, it was just how travel was done. Now I'm pretty senior, but not senior enough to have my own assistant. I get paid a lot more, too. But employers seem to think it's more efficient for me to spend a day figuring out the corporate travel portal to plan and book my trip than to pay an expert to get it done in an hour or so.

Apofis 5y ago
Use Jira, make your own bookings (etc), and submit reimbursement requests or have an assistant and earn quite a bit less... hmmm.
- alexjplant 5y ago
  Are the savings from not hiring assistants being passed on to rank-and-file employees via salary or distributed to shareholders and the C-suite? An employee's salary doesn't magically go up because their burdened rate goes down. Let's also not forget the fact that if you're in contracting/consulting it's more lucrative for you to charge the customer for a technical person's expensive time spent on administrivia than it is to hire additional labor and bill them for "the help".
  - cratermoon 5y ago
    Let me clarify: my salary didn't go up because the company fired all the admin assistants. My salary is higher now because I'm a senior engineer. What they pay me and all the other engineers for is our programming ability, but they also pay us to do admin self-service. If there truly was an overall cost savings attributable to reduced headcount (and I'm skeptical), I don't know where it went. I do know that for accounting Reasons, public companies love to show reduced personnel costs on their annual report.