Using Project Management to Build an IT Help Desk

Information technology (IT) organizations are under pressure to operate cheaper but also faster and better. At the same time, they must satisfy business objectives or meet requirements described in service level agreements as users employ complex information technology (e.g., client/server tools) in unique environments (e.g., virtual offices).

To meet these demands, many IT organizations are setting up a help desk to which users can direct inquiries and problems, ranging from training to network management. Many of these services are becoming automated in response to users’ needs for a fast, meaningful response. Yet an effective help desk is more than an automated tool. It requires a complete infrastructure to support it and to provide those services that cannot be automated. It is important, therefore, to build a help desk that consolidates and coordinates its tools and services to meet demands.

This need becomes even more important as the growth of help desks will climb steadily. Some help desk experts believe the market for help desk tools will quadruple by the end of this century. In addition, the market for outsourcing help desk development is expected to climb as the result of a failure to deliver services and contain development costs.

HELP DESK DEFINED

A help desk, of course, is a centralized place that people can direct their inquiries for answers and problems for resolution. Depending on the size of the organization and the role of the help desk, it requires both application software and a supporting infrastructure. Typically, an IT help desk addresses queries and problems dealing with technological and business process issues. A help desk uses automated and manual approaches to handle queries and problems.

If an IT help desk fails to meet the criteria of speed, reliability, and service, it will fail. The larger the organization to support and the greater the array of services to provide makes project management essential for providing a help desk that users will want to contact and receive rapid, reliable responses.

CRITERIA FOR A PROJECT

Building a help desk meets all the criteria for being a project. It has a fixed end date for completion. It has a defined end product (e.g., fully operational help desk with specific services). It requires a sequence of tasks that must be completed before becoming operational. Finally, it consumes money, especially for labor and tools.

Depending on the magnitude of the help desk, the total development cost can range from several thousands to millions of dollars.

SIX FUNCTIONS OF PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Building a help desk is a project that requires laying the groundwork for its successful completion. This involves performing six key, basic functions: leading, defining, planning, organizing, controlling, and closing.

Leading is motivating people to perform in a manner that contributes towards meeting or exceeding project goals and objectives. It is the only function that occurs throughout the life cycle of a help desk project. It requires not only doing the right things but doing them continuously, from project inception to completion. Leading is also required during the execution of all the other project management functions.

Defining is identifying what the help desk project must accomplish. It requires pinpointing the overall goal(s) of the project, its specific objectives, the major players and their responsibilities, and any significant constraints.

Planning is developing a path to achieve the goal(s) and objectives of the project. It requires determining in advance who must do what and when.

Organizing is setting up an infrastructure that efficiently and effectively executes the plan to achieve project goals and objectives. The idea is to maximize the output of resources with minimum investment via communication and coordination.

Controlling is tracking (looking at the past) and monitoring (projecting into the future). It requires ensuring that the project has, is, and will achieve the project’s goal(s) and objectives according to the plan.

Closing is completing a project in a manner that minimizes waste and maximizes effort as well as provide lessons for future projects.

Leading

Building a help desk uniquely requires project managers to exercise leadership. It involves a broad array of players: senior and mid-level executives, supervisors, end users, and IT technical experts, just to name a few. Project managers must motivate all of their players to provide information, expertise, time, and effort. Without that leadership, acceptance of the help desk will be difficult and can result in project failure, whether from a cost, schedule, or quality perspective.

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.

Outline of the Statement of Work (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)

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.

Responsibility Matrix

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 customers. 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. 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.

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. 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.

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.

Both sets of dates are important for determining the critical path. Tasks on the critical path have matching early and late start and stop dates, thereby indicating no opportunity to let those tasks slide. If they do slide then completing the project on

time is impossible unless corrective action is taken. Another characteristic of tasks on the critical path is that they occupy the longest path in the diagram.

The network diagram works best for managing the details of a project. Under some circumstances, such as reporting to upper management, a simpler, easier to understand schedule is preferable.

Organizing

Communication and infrastructure are two key elements in organizing a help desk project. Both ensure that the project is executed according to plan efficiently and effectively.

Communication This element has two parts: documentation and meetings.

Documentation entails developing any material that proves useful for managing the project. Typical documentation includes forms (e.g., time collection), reports (e.g., status report), procedures (e.g., change control), and reference material.

Often this documentation is collected and then filed in project history files. These files serve as a repository of information about the history of the project, from inception to completion. This information can prove useful for analyzing problems and learning from experience.

Meetings are of three basic types: checkpoint review, status review, and staff.

A checkpoint review meeting is held after completing a major milestone (e.g., completion of a phase). Its purpose is to learn from the experience up to a specific point in time and decide whether to proceed.

A status review meeting is held regularly to determine progress against the project plan, from a cost, schedule, and quality perspective. It is preferable to collect status prior to the meeting so people can discuss issues intelligently.

A staff meeting also is held regularly. Its purpose is to share information and experiences. Often times, the staff and status review meetings are held together in the same session to reduce the number of meetings and the time spent in them. Infrastructure This element deals with applying resources in a manner that maximizes output. One approach is to set up a project organization, which is reflected in an organizational chart. The organizational chart should provide a reporting structure and clarify roles and responsibilities. The organization should incorporate basic management principles, such as span of control, unity of direction, and accountability.

Another approach is to publish a responsibility matrix as discussed earlier. The matrix helps to clarify responsibilities and the extent of involvement. Publication breeds commitment because it gives visibility.

Still another effective approach is to establish a project office. Depending on the project’s size, of course, the project office is a place for holding meetings, storing documentation, and displaying information. A good way to display information is to set up a visibility wall or even a room to display plans, architecture, and other key information of the project. The wall or room then turns the project office into an effective communications as well as administrative center.

Team members and customers of help desk projects will find the visibility wall or room useful. With plots or diagrams on display, they can see the overall structure of the help desk center, its services, its procedures, and the impact on the business.

Controlling

It is rare that a project proceeds according to plan throughout its life cycle. Frequently, variances from the plan will occur, either from a cost, schedule, or quality perspective. Keeping a pulse on the project, therefore, is critical to ensure adherence to the plans. This involves performing the following four actions.

Collecting Status Data This action will occur just prior to or during status review meetings. Data should come from the people responsible for their respective tasks.

Assessing Performance After collecting and compiling the status data, determine whether a variance or deviation from the plan has occurred and its criticality. The variance will come from one or more of three areas: cost, schedule, or quality. For cost and schedule, project management software can help determine the impact of a variance.

Taking Corrective Action If a variance appears, the next action is to decide whether to take corrective action. Corrective action might entail working overtime to get back on schedule or pursuing a complete replanning effort for the help desk project.

Managing Changes With movement, goes an old saying, comes change. A project environment constantly is moving and changing. Project managers must deal intelligently with those changes; otherwise, they constantly will fight fires. It is important, therefore, for project managers to establish an infrastructure to capture, prioritize, evaluate, and dispose changes. This action involves going beyond using configuration management software. It also deals with organizational and behavioral changes, something help desk projects must continually reconcile with their development plan.

Closing

All projects end for many reasons. They may last so long that they lose their relevancy to the customer. They may lose their funding. They may have achieved their goal(s). Whatever the reason, it is important to close as efficiently as possible while remaining effective to the very end. It also means learning from the performance so that history does or does not repeat itself on similar projects in the future.

When closing a project, therefore, it is important to perform several actions.

Converting Data into Information Throughout a project, if organized well, it will accumulate data. This data must be converted into information. This information is useful to track performance and identify what did and did not go well. With this information, project managers can determine the overall success or failure of the project. It also enables preparing the lessons learned.

Preparing the Lessons Learned This document captures the key experiences of the project team so that future projects can capitalize on what to do and not to do. The lessons learned should cover business and technical topics.

Releasing People Although keeping an inventory of people to handle contingencies provides a comfort level, it is more efficient to retain only the necessary individuals to complete remaining tasks. Having too many nonproductive people adds unnecessary costs and lowers the productivity of the people with remaining work. It also prevents people from working on other projects that could use their skills.

CONCLUSION

Building an IT help desk was once seen as a dead-end route for IT professionals. Today, just the opposite is the prevalent viewpoint. A help desk serves as an information hub for answering questions and solving problems that are business and technical in nature. It is imperative, therefore, that a help desk project results in an organization that provides timely, meaningful services to its customers. Project management is the tool to ensure that occurs.