Helpdesk definition: A team of too few members with too many customers, expected to know everything about everything, given very little resource and even less training.
Working at the coal face of IT, it is important that the members of the helpdesk team have good and highly visible support.
It is all to easy for them to feel that they are metaphorically standing in the arena of the Coliseum, facing a pack of hungry lions and the gates through which they entered have been locked behind them. (To continue the analogy, the programmers, system administrators and managers are the people who run the games and watch from behind the safety of the gates.)
When there is a problem that require assistance from the developers it is important that there is someone available from the developer team to
Helpdesk analysts are just like any other worker, they need to be managed well in order to yield maximum productivity.
Last week I chatted with my manager on this subject, he showed me how a worker moves through various stages during their personal development. There is a correlation between motivation and productivity which moves through a variety of stages. Initially, when the worker is at the bottom of the learning curve they are highly motivated but not highly productive.
As their skill sets develop the motivation slips somewhat but the efficiency improves until they get to the point when they know the job, can do all the routine tasks and are beginning to get bored and this is where the productivity starts to slip. The skill here is for the manager to recognize the signs and introduce a new challenge, this will take the worker back to the motivated / productive stage.
Everyone is different and needs to be managed in a different way. Some people require very little guidance but need to feel that there is a safety net for them. Others needs very clear direction. Some can handle delegation, other thrive on projects. Some are self motivated. Some need very clear guidelines.
All these types are important to form a well rounded team. The range of tasks needing to be done by the average helpdesk (Is there any such thing as an average helpdesk?) is vast and there is never any shortage of things for them to do.
Hopefully there are enough people in the team to provide for some other activities when the peak flow of calls has subsided. There is always training to be done, documentation, personal development and so forth.
So often helpdesks are seen as a cost center and are given the bare minimum of resource.
We still have a fight on our hands to convince the bean counters that, far from being a cost loading on a company, a good helpdesk is a huge cost saving feature and should be resourced accordingly.
