[siffland]

A huge problem with ticketing systems is then management uses it to track all productivity.

We had a ticketing system and one guy in our group had between 60% and 80% more tickets than the rest of us. So it would seem we were all slackers, however he took the tickets that took like 2 minutes to do (password resets, account unlocks, etc...), meanwhile i would get stuck troubleshooting a production performance issue that would consume hours. Management didn't care what the ticket was, they liked to see pretty numbers of tickets completed.

I might be the only one who had this experience, and i am not saying ticketing systems are bad, they are extremely useful, as long as everyone knows how they work.

[garettmd]

You're definitely not the only one to have this experience.

Honestly, I think the problem is structural with regard to management. Just changing the process or tool (ticketing vs constant communication with manager) isn't enough. It probably needs to be combined with smaller teams (i.e. Amazon's pizza rule) and management defining goals and "success" as more than meeting some narrow KPIs (MTTR on tickets, for example)

[thrownaway954]

On the flip side... At my previous job, cause of the ticket tracking system, it was shown that I handled 40% of all tickets that came into our team of 7 people. And this wasn't 2 minute tickets either, these were projects also.

Sorry you had that experience, but to me the justification of those types of system are solid.