Exercising leadership on help desk projects is even more difficult in a general business environment that is constantly changing, from markets to organizational structures. In addition, help desk projects face challenges of high staff turnover, shortage of people with the requisite technical expertise, and unyielding customer demands for good, reliable service. These circumstances challenge the leadership skills of even the best project managers.
It is important for project managers of help desk projects to perform the basic skills of leadership.
Communicating Regularly Setting up an IT help desk requires the participation of a large number of people with unique skills. Often, these people work independently and isolated. It is important that project managers ensure that communication flows among all the participants, horizontally and vertically.
Encouraging Teaming Because many people on a help desk project are specialists who work independently, the feeling of being a member of a team is difficult to acquire.
Project managers must work to encourage greater interaction so that synergy is generated and directed towards accomplishing the goals of the project. Otherwise, the esprit de corps of the team suffers and, consequently, the output.
Facilitating Performance Team members working on a help desk project are more than likely supporting other projects. They can find themselves facing conflicting priorities. Such conflicts can interfere with their productivity. Project managers must work to resolve these conflicts and other impediments to productivity.
Keeping Focus on the Vision A tendency on help desk projects, like all projects in general, is to stray away from the vision. Scope creep, for example, is a common occurrence on a help desk project because of the tendency to increase the services that the help desk will provide. Project managers keep everyone concentrating on the vision, not expanding it.
Defining
For a help desk project to start off successfully, it is important to know its basic who, what, when, where, why, and how. The medium for accomplishing this is the statement of work (SOW).
The SOW is a document that captures all that information at a high level. It lays the groundwork for effectively and efficiently managing the project, throughout its life cycle. It also serves as an excellent communications tool between the help desk development team and the customers.
The SOW is especially useful for help desk projects. The customer, expectations, and deliverables often are vague concepts and remain illdefined. Just the draft of a SOW
helps to define more clearly all three, thereby avoiding problems later in the life cycle of the project. Exhibit 1 is an outline of the SOW with accompanying examples for each section.
Exhibit 1. Outline of the Statement of Work (SOW)
Section
Example
Introduction
The causes for the help desk project and a description of the customers
Scope
The specific services that the help desk will and maybe will not provide
Goal and
The minimum level of services to provide and their priorities
Section
Example
objectives
Assumptions
The anticipated levels of support from internal functional
management and expectations from customers
Resources
The required skills for performing the tasks of the project, such as specific PC application programming, knowledge of call
management systems, and problem management
Schedule
Major milestones, including the project completion date
Budget
The total cost of the project, broken by phase or deliverable Approvers
The signers of the SOW
After completing the SOW, project managers can develop a project announcement that declares the formation of the project. The project sponsor signs the memo, which communicates the name of the project, goal(s), completion date, and any other information deemed important.
The project announcement serves two primary purposes. First, it gives visibility to the project. Second, it communicates that senior management is behind the project.
Planning
After the SOW and the project announcement comes the project plan. It involves several actions.
Building the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) The deliverables (e.g., products or services) that make up the help desk are defined in Exhibit 2. It has a top-down, broad-to-specific, hierarchical structure to it, showing the deliverables at the top and the tasks to build them towards the bottom.
Exhibit 2. Work Breakdown Structure
Each leg of the WBS can vary in depth and content. It is preferable to explore each leg in sufficient detail so that progress eventually can be tracked meaningfully.
Some common items to include in a WBS for a help desk project are:
§ Application development and maintenance
§ Asset management
§ Call/service request management
§ Escalation criteria
§ Evaluation criteria
§ Metrics
§ Problem management
§ Procedures
§ Processes
§ Resources
§ Security
§ Service support requirements
§ Systems management
§ Tools
§ Tracking and reporting
§ Training
§ Workflow
Assigning Resources After preparing the WBS, the next action is to determine the skills required to complete each task. The assignment of skills is done at the lowest level of the WBS; the lowest level is called the work package level. It is at this level that tracking schedule performance is done.
Project managers, of course, consider more than skill to perform each task. They must look at the personality, training, and experience requirements to complete a specific task. When assigning more than one person to a task, they should also designate one primary person to be held accountable for results. In the end, project managers should produce a responsibility matrix, as shown in Exhibit 3.
Exhibit 3. Responsibility Matrix
Task
Smith
James
Valdez
Ludlock
2.1.1.1 Determine mode of
P
S
S
notification
2.1.1.2 Determine requirements P
S
S
of notification
2.1.2.1 Capture “why” data
S
P
2.1.2.2 Capture “who” data
S
P
2.1.2.3 Capture “when” data
S
P
2.1.2.4 Capture “what” data
S
P
2.1.2.5 Capture “where” data
S
P
2.1.2.6 Capture “how” data
S
P
Note: P = Primary responsibility; S = Support responsibility.
On a help desk project, two sets of skills are critical for an IT help desk to succeed: technical and people. Technical skills, for example, deal with building applications.
People skills, for example, deal with how to interact with team members and custome rs. Unfortunately, it is rare to find both sets of skills in one individual. Yet both are essential for the success of all IT projects in general and especially help desk ones. The latter must provide technical expertise while at the same time provide a service to the customer. Assignments, therefore, must weigh carefully the requirements for both sets of skills.
Estimating the Time to Complete Each Task and Convert It to Flow Time With the resources now assigned at the work package level, the next action is to estimate the time to complete each task and convert the numbers to flow time. The estimates will be important to calculate schedule dates and costs as well as employ people efficiently.
A reliable but effective estimating method is the three-point estimating technique, as illustrated in Exhibit 4. It involves determining three estimates to perform a task:
most pessimistic (the time required to complete a task under worst conditions); most optimistic (the time required to complete a task under best conditions); and the most likely (the time required to complete a task under normal conditions). The result is an expected time. The expected time is then further adjusted for nonproductive time (e.g., interruptions) and, subsequently, converted to flow time.
Exhibit 4. Estimating Time and Flowtime
Most Optimistic = 48 Hours
Most Likely = 84 Hours
Most Pessimistic = 124 Hours
Expected Time = [48 + 4(84) + 200]/6 = 97 hours (approx.)
Non-productive time = 10 percent
97 X?1.10 = 107 hours (approx.)
Convert to flowtime, assuming 8 hours per day
107/8 = 13 days (approx.)
Developing a Network Diagram Using the lower level tasks in the WBS, the next action is to illustrate the relationship between them in a network diagram (Exhibit 5).
In other words, the network diagram shows the dependencies among tasks, reflecting which one starts and ends first, second, and so on. The network diagram is useful for calculating dates for each task and, consequently, the entire project.
Exhibit 5. Network Diagram
The network diagram is an excellent tool for managing help desk projects. The projects involve a complex array of tasks that are both technical and business in nature. The diagram provides a roadmap to follow to ensure that both sets of tasks are coordinated well by the time the help desk is open to the customer.
Calculating the Start and End Dates for Each Task With the flow time now available for each task and the dependencies identified, the next action is to calculate two sets of start and stop dates for each task and, consequently, the entire project: early start date is the earliest time to begin a task; early finish date is the earliest time to complete a task; late start is the latest time to start a task; and late finish is the latest time to complete a task.
The early late and start dates are calculated by moving through the network diagram from left to right, using the relationships between the tasks and their respective flow times. The late start and finish dates are calculated by moving from right to left in the network diagram.