We brought out technicians back early to prepare for the start of school. They have detailed checklists for each school, classroom, and user. We track status daily to measure progress and determine where resources need to be shifted. We believe that the more we get accomplished before the teachers return, the more likely the school year will start with fewer problems.
I am preparing to be a panelist at a conference. The subject is, “Getting the most out of your IT budget.” I have copnsidered the traditional ways such as aligning IT functions with district priorities, becoming more efficient. I welcome your ideas on new or novel ideas.
Recently, we have developed our Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). We believe our leading KPI is the number of work orders submitted to the IT department. Since summer slow dwon, we have caught up and reached a low of 78 backlogged work orders at the end of June.
We have also revamped our process controls for next year. We will have a non-technical person manage the process. He will be able to direct human resources and re-allocate when work order thresholds are exceeded or work builds up. We believe this will help us compensate for the loss of ten positions.
Over the past year, we have developed our Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Our KPIs fall into three categories – Leading Indicators, Training Indicators, and Projects.
The first and best KPI is a leading and one we will focus on. It is simply the number of work orders submitted. If we prevent the problem from occurring, a work order will not be submitted. Thus, this is where we need to place our focus. We will be analyzing the work orders from last year to determine areas where we can, through training, reduce the amount of work orders submitted.
Two other KPIs are trailing indicators – Response Time and Resolution Time. Both are reactive in nature indicate how quickly we respond to and resolve the problem. Response Time is the time between the creation of a work order and the first response by a Customer Service Representative to the customer. Resolution Time is the time between the creation of a work order the problem being resolved.
We have also refined our work order priorities that we will incorporate into our Help Desk system for next year. Users will be able to select an initial priority and Customer Service Representatives will be able to upgrade or downgrade the priority. Each priority will have an associated standard (length of time we can achieve under normal circumstances) and a goal (shorter period of time that would provide better service). Below are our priorities:
Priority Standard Goal
Critical One business day Four hours
High Two business days One business day
Medium Three business days Two business days
Low Seven business days Three business days
We will use Service Level Agreement logic in our Help Desk software to measure our success against these priorities.
Our last KPI is our projects. We must conduct quality project management in order to deliver projects on time and under budget. We have a simple PowerPoint slide we call a “Four Box” to provide status of projects. The box are:
-Accomplishments – Last 14 Days
-Key Activities to Complete – Next 14 Days
-Risks/Issues
-Key Milestones/Deliverables
I would appreciate any feedback.
We are beginning a enterprise project management solution (EPM) to help us prioritize and manage our projects. The core software would be Microsoft Project 2007. Project Managers would create projects using MS Project, but Team Members would use a a simple web portal to input status.
I like to hear from any other school districts that have tried this.
Thanks.
Luke
I am a technology director of a school district in South Carolina. I hope this blog will allow me to communicate quickly wiht folks in my community as well as receive feedback worldwide.