* * * * *

                        Internal Corporate Malfeasense

This is all types of messed up.

Negiyo had an internal trouble ticket system, called TTTS (The Trouble Ticket
System). Built in-house it wasn't a bad system and since it was developed
within Negiyo, it was pretty well integrated workflow wise.

But a few years ago it seems it because too slow to be usable and so a search
for a replacement commenced. And this is where things become unclear. A new
system, Cowbell was found to replace TTTS. Hefty new hardware was bought.
Hefty new software (Oracle [1] for one) was bought. And Cowbell was bought
(and whoever was responsible either received a hefty kick-back, received
incredible sex or was totally blinded by the “Silver Bullet [2]” bill-of-
sales they were presented with).

Much wailing, knashing of teeth and late night hacking sessions and Cowbell
was on the floor for all of Negiyo to use.

Now, when TTTS was in use, it was expected that Level 1 Technical Support
Person (L1TSP) would be able to handle (either resolve or escalate) 60 cases
in average per day (around 7.5 minutes per case). Unfortunately the
expectations of Cowbell vastly exceeded what Cowbell could actually handle
and the average number of cases a L1TSP (Level 1 Technical Support Person)
was expected to handle dropped to about 20 (or one case every 22.5 minutes).

And even that is pushing things. A person new to the system might be lucky to
get one case out per hour.

It's not that the technical issues the L1TSPs are expected to troubleshoot
are harder. In fact, they haven't really changed since TTTS was in use, and
in most cases, the technical issues only take about five minutes on average
to troubleshoot. It's looking up customer information, gathering notes,
collecting notes, writing the case history and wrapping things up that takes
fifteen minutes or more under Cowbell. Cowbell requires IE (Internet
Explorer) (whereas TTTS could use any browser) and to get anything done (say,
looking up related tickets) you have to have a separate instance of IE
running (not window—an actual second copy of the program running) and often
times, three or more instances of IE are required. As such, there is
currently a three month backlog of cases due to the time required to handle
such cases under Cowbell.

A few months ago some mid-level manager realized that if the hardware bought
for Cowbell had been used for TTTS, then the whole issue of TTTS being too
slow to use would never have been an issue. Too late to change back now.

Until Negiyo got a second bill from Cowbell for five figures.

It turns out that one just doesn't buy Cowbell, one leases Cowbell for five
figures a year, every year, year in and year out.

Any savings for buying a pre-canned solution over maintaining an in-house
built solution just went out the window (and the parties responsible for
selecting Cowbell can no longer be found, presumedly they were either
sucessful in spreading the blame around, or left the company two days after
the purchase [DELETED-to rape and pillage other companies-DELETED] for
greener pastures).

So beginning in April they're going back to TTTS.

But they're still [DELETED-abusing-DELETED] training new hires on using
Cowbell. And out of about a dozen new people hired, I think there's only one
that remained in training (yes, Cowbell is that bad).

[1] http://www.oracle.com/
[2] http://www.virtualschool.edu/mon/SoftwareEngineering/BrooksNoSilverBullet.html

Email author at [email protected]

You are viewing proxied material from gopher.conman.org. The copyright of proxied material belongs to its original authors. Any comments or complaints in relation to proxied material should be directed to the original authors of the content concerned. Please see the disclaimer for more details.