Help desk
Optimizing Remote Teams with a Ticketing System
In a dynamic product development environment, clarity and organization are not just preferences; they are necessities. Our ticketing system holds the project's structure together. It's the roadmap for every task, guiding each one from the ideation stage to the execution phase.
Understanding the Ticket
A ticket is not just a task. It's an instruction manual tailored for PM’s and the team of builders. It encapsulates all critical information surrounding a project. Guided by the North Star, culture deck, and suggested work methodologies, it's a tool designed to foster a robust, remote-capable team.
Crafting a Ticket: The Trello Way
I suggest using Trello (initially*), to create and manage tickets. Each Trello card should be well-detailed, specific, and supported with images or videos for better understanding. It should link back to the original slack message requesting the ticket, with video explanations using Loom, with annotations with references for the range of times mentioned.
Prioritizing Matrix System
The proposed prioritization matrix categorizes tickets based on their importance, urgency, and severity. This system helps navigate through tasks efficiently, ensuring that critical issues receive immediate attention, while less urgent tasks are scheduled appropriately.
- Q1 - Important and Urgent: Critical tasks. The quadrant with the highest priority.
- Q2 - Important, but Not Urgent: Important goals.
- Q3 - Urgent, but Not Important: Disruptions that prevent a system or process, from working as expected. They should be reviewed constantly, as these could turn into Q1 problems.
- Q4 - Not Urgent and Not Important: These tasks are distractions. We should keep this in the lowest of our priorities.
Value tags
We complement our Priorities matrix with 4 tags, for us to be able to navigate within the quadrants.
Critical: Affecting a critical business application; potential loss of business critical data, client data, or financial records. Problem has to be solved right away, regardless of time or date.
High: Affecting a non-critical business application; affecting a critical IT support application.
Medium: Affecting a non-critical IT support application; Critical individual user application.
Low: Non-critical individual user application.
Some examples:
Problem 1: People are not getting their payments in the entire business application.
Priority: Q1 - Critical
Justification: This is a critical business application and is regarded as urgent and important.
Problem 2: The scrolling in Listing is not working as expected and is damaging the user experience.
Priority: Q2 - Low
Justification: The scrolling experience on the listing page is considered an important task with low urgency, because it’s disrupting a process that should always work as expected. It’s value tag is low because it’s a non-critical individual user application.
Problem 3: The icon is png and not svg as it is supposed too.
Priority: Q4 - Low
Justification: These task, though it should be solved, it’s not related to a critical or user application, and is not preventing any process from working as expected.
Weekly Schedule: Organizing the Work Flow
- Mondays: Planning day. We assess our standing, identify critical tasks, and review the previous week's sprint.
- Daily Standups: A brief meeting every morning to share updates, discuss blockers and align on the day’s priorities.
- Wednesdays & Thursdays: Q&A days for clarifying any issues regarding the current workload. Additionally, these days are earmarked for fostering communication through regular Feedback Loops, ensuring that all stakeholders are aligned and any issues are addressed promptly.
- Fridays: Deployment day for testing in a controlled environment, reviewing, and making necessary adjustments before live deployment.
- Retrospective Meetings: Scheduled at the end of each sprint, these meetings provide a platform for reflection, discussing what went well, what didn’t, and how processes can be improved for the next sprint.
Iterative Progression
Embracing Agile principles, we prefer the adoption of the Kanban methodology utilizing Trello as tool of choice. This approach facilitates a flexible, iterative progression towards project goals, allowing for continuous improvement and responsiveness to change.
Unified Communication Platform
Our communication backbone consists of Slack and Zoom, integrated with Trello to provide real-time updates on ticket status, fostering seamless collaboration and ensuring that everyone stays in the loop on project developments.
Documentation and Learning Repository
We use Notion as our documentation hub, serving as a reservoir for all project-related information. It houses our Learning Repository, a treasure trove of resources, best practices, and insights that drive continuous improvement and knowledge sharing among the team.
Performance Metrics Implementation
Our Performance Metrics are crucial indicators of our project's health and effectiveness. These metrics include:
- Task Completion Rate: Monitoring the rate at which tasks are completed against the planned schedule.
- Bug Frequency: Tracking the occurrence of bugs to ensure the quality of work.
- Response Time: Measuring the speed at which issues are addressed and resolved.
- Client Satisfaction: Gauging the satisfaction level of our clients based on feedback and reviews.
Implementing these metrics involves a structured approach:
- Definition and Communication: Clearly define each metric, its importance, and communicate them to the team.
- Data Collection: Establish automated data collection processes, ensuring accuracy and consistency.
- Regular Review: Schedule regular review sessions to analyze the data, identify trends, and gauge performance.
- Actionable Insights: Derive actionable insights from the data, identifying areas for improvement.
- Continuous Monitoring: Maintain a continuous monitoring system to ensure that performance remains on track and any deviations are promptly addressed.
Through this structured approach, we aim to foster a culture of excellence, continuous improvement, and data-driven decision-making, propelling our projects to successful fruition with a clear vision and actionable insights.