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by ethbr0 1722 days ago
You're probably getting downvotes because you said "ticket."

Which speaks to another problem with most large company cultures: ticket shoveling. In a healthy company, every ticket should receive one of three outcomes.

(1) I can fix this, I work the ticket to completion, then request verification it's resolved.

(2) I cannot fix this, but I know someone who can. I add context if needed, forward it to the appropriate person, and stay appraised of it and available until it's completed.

(3) I cannot fix this, and nobody I know of can. I list out reasons why this cannot be fixed, and give any information I might have about alternative contacts who might(!) be able to help, and close the ticket.

In most companies, and I think this has been exacerbated by outsourced IT and contractual resolution SLAs, until everyone's internalized it as the way they and everyone else should act, you get something like this.

(1) Is work. This is to be avoided at all cost.

(2) I blindly forward a ticket on to anyone else who looks remotely responsible, to get it out of my queue, and then wash my hands of the entire matter and forget it ever existed. I certainly don't follow up or add context.

(3) I close the ticket without providing any reason why, or information I have about someone who might know something I don't, who could help.

A reliable metric I've come up with for measuring corporate and/or team disfunction is to count how many circuits a worst-case ticket can receive (where a circuit is: originator -> some number of teams -> originator/loop). My record is 3, before someone noticed.

1 comments

I would like to add another interesting pattern that get exercised when a ticket is work, and forwarding will make it bounce back. You forward only to your IT support team one by one. And each member attempts to waste as much of the requester's time as possible. Each time waster is creative, but usually it consists of minimal efforts in asking question taking maximal effort to answer. Good chance the requester will give up on that ticket before the full team went at it, and would gladly agree to get that closed as remediated. Better live with a problem than a bigger one.