3 ms·

This is not the right approach. Your users finding issues in your system is your users doing a service for you. Help them do it better, don't put your head in t

by m1sta_ 4y ago

This is not the right approach. Your users finding issues in your system is your users doing a service for you. Help them do it better, don't put your head in the sand because they're not doing what you had hoped.

derefr 4y ago
> Your users finding issues in your system is your users doing a service for you. Well, yes, but if they don't report the issue in a way where it can be resolved, then they haven't actually done the service, yet. They've half-done it. > don't put your head in the sand because they're not doing what you had hoped. To be clear, the point isn't that these issues shouldn't be addressed; it's that users need a disincentive to laziness / an incentive to engage actively with the ticketing process. Because, by default, there is no such incentive. By default, in most companies, IT helpdesk workers are seen as a kind of lower-class servant to the people submitting the tickets, where the entire responsibility for solving the problem — including diagnosing the problem — is placed upon them; and anything they might ask of the ticket submitter, e.g. information about what's going wrong in order to do the diagnosis, is seen as an impingement upon the submitter's valuable time. Like a maid interrupting their master's important conversation to ask how they'd like their tea. Nothing needs to change about the workflow of helpdesk ticket submission. In many cases, it's already pretty good. As the GP states, we've tried putting tons of work into guiding people through information-collection flows in such a way that people motivated to do so will submit all useful/relevant information for diagnosis. The only thing that needs to change, is the relative status with which ticket submitters see the IT people. The incentives, on who needs to "put in the work" for whom. In every organization with a sane/healthy/functional IT system I've ever seen, the system is sane/healthy/functional precisely because someone high in the company, e.g. the CTO, happens to also be the head of the IT department; and therefore IT workers, in some sense, have an "ear to power." It's a bit like the setup of the show Undercover Boss — "flipping the script" of traditional organizational power dynamics, by giving those on the bottom of the organizational hierarchy a direct line to those at the top, such that the people in the middle will get in trouble for disrespecting the people who nominally "work for them" (but, in reality, work for those at the top, just assigned to be managed by them.)
- m1sta_ 4y ago
  > in a way where it can be resolved I disagree. Whether the bug can be resolved is on you, not them. It's nice when they make it easy. It's smart to incentivise them to help more than just a basic report. It's stupid to ignore the existence of a bug just because you don't like the way that someone reported it. You might deprioritise it based on a time ROI consideration but you shouldn't ignore it.

by m1sta_ 4y ago

derefr 4y ago

> Your users finding issues in your system is your users doing a service for you. Well, yes, but if they don't report the issue in a way where it can be resolved, then they haven't actually done the service, yet. They've half-done it. > don't put your head in the sand because they're not doing what you had hoped. To be clear, the point isn't that these issues shouldn't be addressed; it's that users need a disincentive to laziness / an incentive to engage actively with the ticketing process. Because, by default, there is no such incentive. By default, in most companies, IT helpdesk workers are seen as a kind of lower-class servant to the people submitting the tickets, where the entire responsibility for solving the problem — including diagnosing the problem — is placed upon them; and anything they might ask of the ticket submitter, e.g. information about what's going wrong in order to do the diagnosis, is seen as an impingement upon the submitter's valuable time. Like a maid interrupting their master's important conversation to ask how they'd like their tea. Nothing needs to change about the workflow of helpdesk ticket submission. In many cases, it's already pretty good. As the GP states, we've tried putting tons of work into guiding people through information-collection flows in such a way that people motivated to do so will submit all useful/relevant information for diagnosis. The only thing that needs to change, is the relative status with which ticket submitters see the IT people. The incentives, on who needs to "put in the work" for whom. In every organization with a sane/healthy/functional IT system I've ever seen, the system is sane/healthy/functional precisely because someone high in the company, e.g. the CTO, happens to also be the head of the IT department; and therefore IT workers, in some sense, have an "ear to power." It's a bit like the setup of the show Undercover Boss — "flipping the script" of traditional organizational power dynamics, by giving those on the bottom of the organizational hierarchy a direct line to those at the top, such that the people in the middle will get in trouble for disrespecting the people who nominally "work for them" (but, in reality, work for those at the top, just assigned to be managed by them.)

m1sta_ 4y ago
> in a way where it can be resolved I disagree. Whether the bug can be resolved is on you, not them. It's nice when they make it easy. It's smart to incentivise them to help more than just a basic report. It's stupid to ignore the existence of a bug just because you don't like the way that someone reported it. You might deprioritise it based on a time ROI consideration but you shouldn't ignore it.