Ask Slashdot: Good Metrics For a Small IT Team? 315
First time accepted submitter shibbyj writes "I'm a member of a small 3 person IT team for a medium sized business (approximately 300-350 employees) that has multiple locations internationally. I have been tasked with logging our performance using the statistics from our ticket management system. I've also been tasked with comparing these stats and determining if we are performing above or below what is considered optimal. I'm wondering what people opinions are on what good metrics should be in regards to mttr mtbf etc. I have had trouble finding information on this."
Re:Metrics suck (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't know how to program? Hit the books - your job may depend on it.
Re:Good luck (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not unusual for management to be clueless about what exactly it is that their IT staff does on a daily basis, nor is it unnatural that they should take an interest. Often, it's a good sign when they actually ask the guys doing the work what the metrics should be... it indicates some degree of trust, and they haven't simply read an "IT Management for Dummies" book over the weekend laying out some arbitrary system that isn't going to fit your organization.
As a more cynical commenter points out, it also provides the opportunity to create a measurement system that you can game to make you look good. But I think it isn't a terrible sign that the bosses care what their employees are up to. It may represent an opportunity to explain what you think is important that perhaps they hadn't considered previously.
Re:Metrics suck (Score:4, Interesting)
it's a nightmare.
metrics and quotas will only lead to less overall return... unless, of course, you're just trying to create a jobs program.
Re:Hahaha (Score:3, Interesting)
Concur with the "someone is getting fired". 3 people supporting 300+ people. That's overtaxed, even school teachers only have to deal with 30 potential-assholes for 8 hours a day and have to put in unpaid overtime because you can't just leave things when the shit hits the fan 10 minutes from clocking out.
As for metrics, serious or otherwise, 3 person team, you should already know who the weakest link is (hint, -you- if you don't come up with a solution.) The boss always asks the least intimidating person, therefor the boss thinks you're the one who could find a reason to fire one of other two people.
Personally I'd tell the boss that you're understaffed as it is, and this is taking time away from valuable IT time.
And if you want a "but I want to do it" answer. The best metric to use "whoever does the worst halfassed job consistently" , also known as the person who shoves work off onto other coworkers (like your boss is doing) when it's they should have taken ownership to begin with.
First, read Robert Austin's book (Score:3, Interesting)
The points I got from the book:
1) Measuring the wrong thing or in the wrong way makes things much, much worse.
2) Good measurements are possible but take a lot of hard work.
3) Measuring things that are easy to measure is almost certainly wrong.
I also endorse BenEnglishAtHome's comment timestamped 8:55pm.
Re:Hahaha (Score:5, Interesting)
As I was idly paging through the comments thinking about how many of them were jumping to outlandish, unsubstantiated conclusions about why the poor submitter was being asked to come up with metrics, I also realized that pretty much nobody (in the finest tradition of Slashdot) has bothered to answer the actual question: "I'm wondering what people opinions are on what good metrics should be in regards to mttr mtbf etc." I think I misunderstood this at first as well... in light of what he does say about the goals ("...determining if we are performing above or below what is considered optimal") I don't think he's asking what metrics to measure or whether or not we think doing so is any good, but instead what reliable industry benchmarks are for those metrics, so he can tell his boss what is "optimal" or not about their operation.
Well, shibby, sorry, but I don't think there are such things, or at least none relevant enough to take back to your management team. The only way to get anything meaningful out of metrics (obviously a lot of other posters are arguing you'll get nothing meaningful out of them; I disagree, but it may not matter either way if those are your orders) is to establish baselines for your organization and track future performance against those. It will take a while and it will have to be viewed in context to be worthwhile... important points to make when you are presenting your findings to management.
I'm being optimistic and assuming genuine business goals and a desire to understand IT operations on the part of non-technical managers are the point of this request, not some haphazard effort to chop down a three-person department, but it is also worth passing along some of the critiques that are being posted here. On the other hand, if you don't already, you should understand that not all managers are buggers, and that many of the better ones have legitimate reasons for trying to understand what is going on in their IT department. We often forget how mysterious what we do looks to the un-initiated, and I have seen enough poorly run IT departments to sympathize with non-technical managers who are grasping for the tools to understand theirs. The point being, getting defensive and obstructive in the face of these requests isn't always the brightest idea; instead, you can look at it as an opportunity to present some of your perspectives and difficulties to managers who are finally prepared to hear about them (after all, they did ask!). They may not have the time or horsepower to learn everything you do in depth, but it is possible to analyze operations based on the right sort of shorthand.
The cynics may be right; only you will know. But I've seen companies run down by their IT departments as often as I've seen IT departments run down by the management team, so performance concerns on both sides are well-founded. Anyone who thinks their manager shouldn't ask for a suitably abstracted toolset for judging performance is asking for a stupid manager.
Re:You get what you reward, not good work (Score:4, Interesting)
Are you measured by abandoned tickets? Then tickets will get resolved, even if they don't reasonably deserve to be considered resolved. You will get things unnecessarily classified as "unable to duplicate", "insufficient information", etc.
I experienced a form of this phenomenon just this afternoon, albeit not in an IT environment...
I went to Bank of America to (proudly) close my accounts, having moved to a smaller and thoroughly more moral bank. The customer service rep figured it out right away when he saw that my six ~18-year-old accounts now all had zero balance, and zero activity for the past month. So we start closing. He is doing the keyboarding and mousing while I am watching the screen.
At a certain point in the process of closing each account, the rep is required to give the reason for account closure. In the popup list of reasons are some very relevant choices: 'Service' and 'Competition' sprang out as the correct choices. He chose 'Misc', and for the sub-reason chose 'Bank of America Consolidation', whatever the hell THAT meant.
It was then that I knew there had been a memo from headquarters, probably last month, that said "We know people are closing their accounts. Management wants to make sure that the reason is NOT people leaving in disgust, headed to our competitors." And so now the CEO can stand up and say "We've only lost 1% of our accounts to the competition!"
Just this afternoon that happened, right in front of me. I almost laughed out loud.