Integrating help desk calls (defects after project wrap up)

[Nathan]

Thank you for your help.

We are planning a Project Server 2003 / SharePoint system
implementation (MS SOX Accelerator as well). One point of confusion
that we have encountered is how to handle help desk tickets that
involve defects after a project has wrapped up. What policies and
procedures have people in this group implemented in order to deal with
this situation? Some of these defects are minor enough that a new
project may not be warranted but developers would like to log their
time against a "chargable" item. My understanding is that people
cannot log time against items in the Issues list.

Thank you for any input. Please correct any problematic assumptions
that I have made and let me know if clarification(s) are needed.
Nathan

 

[eswb10]

Thank you for your help.

We are planning a Project Server 2003 / SharePoint system
implementation (MS SOX Accelerator as well). One point of confusion
that we have encountered is how to handle help desk tickets that
involve defects after a project has wrapped up. What policies and
procedures have people in this group implemented in order to deal with
this situation? Some of these defects are minor enough that a new
project may not be warranted but developers would like to log their
time against a "chargable" item. My understanding is that people
cannot log time against items in the Issues list.

Thank you for any input. Please correct any problematic assumptions
that I have made and let me know if clarification(s) are needed.
Nathan

Nathan,

There are several ways to deal with this situation - I offer a few:

1. If you have "post production support" for major issues, use that.
However, unless you do some work with custom fields to separate the
post production support from the rest of the effort, adding that kind
of effort will just add to the project's duration and cost.

2. If the project is done, and you are tracking issues against it, you
can set up a Support Project that includes all the projects your help
desk needs to support. You can list the projects as subphases, then
list types of work to have your team enter time against. Or you can
train your team to creat a new task when they get a trouble ticket to
work. The tasks should be set up as duration based (for no longer than
a quarter of a year IMHO)with zero effort - so there are no pre
assigned hours to screw up your resource allocations. This will allow
you to collect metrics on how much time each project or application is
consuming for trouble ticket support.

I think that option 2 is the best choice, as it provides metrics. It
needs to be crafted carefully, with input from the help desk team and
their manager(s) so it does not become too difficult to administer.
Mark

 

[Nathan]

Nathan,

There are several ways to deal with this situation - I offer a few:

1. If you have "post production support" for major issues, use that.
However, unless you do some work with custom fields to separate the
post production support from the rest of the effort, adding that kind
of effort will just add to the project's duration and cost.

2. If the project is done, and you are tracking issues against it, you
can set up a Support Project that includes all the projects your help
desk needs to support. You can list the projects as subphases, then
list types of work to have your team enter time against. Or you can
train your team to creat a new task when they get a trouble ticket to
work. The tasks should be set up as duration based (for no longer than
a quarter of a year IMHO)with zero effort - so there are no pre
assigned hours to screw up your resource allocations. This will allow
you to collect metrics on how much time each project or application is
consuming for trouble ticket support.

I think that option 2 is the best choice, as it provides metrics. It
needs to be crafted carefully, with input from the help desk team and
their manager(s) so it does not become too difficult to administer.
Mark

Thank you very much, Mark. I believe that you are right about idea
number two. We will be discussing this issue next week.
Nathan