Scherbakov Alexey

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In the work I am guided by several slogans, and one of them sounds so: "Cannot you work more? Work more smart!". In each of the companies in which I had enough IT direktorstvovat I had not enough employees for accomplishment of all tasks set by the management and me (at least in required terms). Thus, it was necessary to develop some rules of optimization.

Let's begin with simple — from the organization of a workplace of the IT specialist. The main costs of time at the person working "in the field" fall on four tasks:

• communication by phone with users (read — order taking for service);
• movement of to the place of performance of work;
• search of necessary tools for performance of work;
• actually on the solution of a task.

If to assume what on performance of work is timed optimum, then it is possible to increase efficiency by elimination of dead times on three previous points.

It is possible to stop order taking by phone only Help Desk implementation. About it many articles and even the whole ITIL standard therefore on all questions I will send to the primary source are written.

Movement of can be reduced to work location organizational measures, like the organization of the official car, signing of the contract with taxi service or having just placed the technical support engineer is closer to users. Here no special knowledge, except common sense is required.

I coped with the third point by means of "the system administrator's first-aid kit". It is such handbag in which a set of screw-drivers lies, of tools, pressings, connectors, plastic couplers, the portable hard drive and is a lot of all another that can be required by the engineer "on departure" that he could solve all problems at once, without postponing. I will notice that a set of everything used in software company enters this "first-aid kit", except tools. My list of methods to optimize runtime of one task it is not complete, I paid attention only to what can give fast effect and costs rather not much.

However there is one more direction of increase in efficiency of IT service: reduce the number of incidents. It is possible to achieve it, including, rearrangement of a part of work for users.

I will tell at once that for such work it is necessary to have support (or at least not resistance) from company management because you should support the actions with official orders on the organization. The positive image of IT service will also help to perform conceived with a smaller resistance.

The first objection which I usually hear after the offer to shift a part of work for users — "they will never agree", "at us it is so not accepted", "it will not work" and a lot of another, similar to given. If these you believe these objections insuperable, then I suggest to finish on it reading of my article and to pass to following in this magazine — nothing, except dead time, further reading will bring to you. If you feel in yourself forces and desire to exempt the employees from a part of work — let's continue. All objections given by me — normal reaction of your own employees to changes. You should overcome at first their resistance, to carry away them the idea, and then already to overcome resistance of all other users. So, we will start.