I've classified this as a rant, but this is an extremely mild one. The business of the start of semester has reached it's conclusion. I say this on the basis that the last "emergency" in RT was ended a couple days ago and I haven't been handed another emergency since.
Speaking of emergencies, I'll just use the rest of this blog to explain how the tech staff (namely me since I do the prioritizing) prioritize incoming requests. As most systems administrators can tell you, the job of sysadmin is a little difficult because there are usually more things to be taken care of than you are able to during than a short 70 year life span may allow for. As such, it is necessary to setup prioritization. Based upon the prioritization ideas of other systems administrator, I put together a policy with the following priorities:
- 80 - 89 : Emergency
- 75 : Routine
- 60 - 69 : Critical
- 55 : Unprioritized Fac/Staff Request
- 50 : Unprioritized Other Request
- 40 - 49 : Very Important
- 30 - 39 : Important
- 20 - 29 : Not Important
- 10 - 19 : Wish List
I've left the top and bottom of the ranges unspoken for in case I want to add something else or move things around a bit in the future.
Basically, tickets are assigned a starting priority of 50 or 55 based upon whether or not the ticket is posted to the normal help list or the special one given to faculty and staff. In the future, I think I'd like to make this assignment more or less automatic based upon the sender rather than the destination, but that's probably a "Not Important" task which will never get done. I then assign a ticket to some range and then I assign (or the someone takes) ownership to the ticket, the administrator responsible for following up on the problem. The assigned person may then adjust the ticket within the priority range as he sees fit (or she, should a woman ever apply and get the position; none have applied since I've been Coordinator).
If anyone has one or more Emergencies, they are not permitted to handle anything else until all action they are able to take action on all Emergency tasks. That is, the task might not be resolved, but everything that can be done to move towards resolution has been done. All other tasks should wait in lieu of an Emergency. Only the tasks that require the most urgency and have the highest importance are given Emergency status. They should never be ignored. Generally, only faculty or staff are able to make requests that reach this high of a status unless a request by a student will affect faculty or staff, or the entire student body.
The Routine tasks are generally simple tasks that are easy to complete. This is not always the case as I know Tyson has a number of Routines that have been in his list for a long time while he waits for me to complete more pieces of the account manager software. It's also a place to place notes about routine tasks that might not go away, but need to be reviewed on a routine basis (such as disabled accounts for printing fees and other reasons).
The Critical tasks have the same requirements as the Emergencies. However, they aren't so urgent as to cause Routine tasks to stack up unattended to. Emergencies are sometimes downgraded to Critical if they cannot be handled quickly. Most problems that have no known work around and bother faculty, staff, or a group of students are assigned Critical status. The "work-around" requirement is the major difference between Critical and Very Important. If a user has to work more, but can still get their work done, then it's Very Important. If this problem keeps a user from doing their work, then it's Critical. This is a troublesome rule because annoyances are (in some cases) worse than something without a work around. In those cases, I have been known to upgrade what would otherwise be a Very Important to a Critical.
The four remaining levels are treated as essentially part of the same category. These tasks can be worked on in any order, but the tasks at the top are preferred. The levels 20 through 49 are assigned by me to faculty, staff, and PhD student requests that aren't Critical, Emergency, or Routine, but we'd like to handle when we finish of those---which usually means late in the semester or during the summer. The levels 10 through 39 are assinged by me to all other student requests. The 40 through 49 is also the location for internal systems projects related to improving overall system quality and adding new features.
The Very Important stuff will probably be taken care of within a year. The Important stuff may be handled if we ever find time and it's easy enough. Anything else might happen, but probably won't in the foreseeable future (or might happen, but only as a side-effect of something else).
Anyway, for those who are interested, that's pretty much how we prioritize things. If you're task doesn't get taken care of for a long time and you think it should be, a large cash donation to hire more tech staff would be a move in the right direction.
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