FAO IT guys - so my PM decides to get stroppy with me....
Discussion
Hi all,
So I work in IT in 2nd/3rd line application support. As you can imagine, a support role can be very difficult managing so many different clients. Anyway, two weeks ago, my colleague in 1st line (and we had just one guy in 1st line) resigned without giving any notice and just called my manager. Did not serve his leave, claimed he would take his holidays when his holiday allowance probably didn't add up to a month's worth of notice period. No handover etc.
Anyway, as I am in 2nd line, all of his work comes to me. Password resets all the basic stuff. Easy stuff. However, I had my own queue of cases to work on which I was managing well and was not too much for one person. Now I have too many cases. I've given my service desk manager a msg not to assign more until I make headway on the backlog.
At the same time, before christmas a CR came in to fix a bit of code (which we did not write). It went to my colleague in 3rd line who gave an estimate of 1 day (a very foolish estimate which seems to have no slack in it) and that was commited to the client with little discussion with the PM and him. For 3 months, he could not action this case and it came to me. The logic was flawed as I was assigned the case because I had the least number of cases but it's not the count of cases, its the complexity. I had no say in the matter despite my workload and commitments being well known to my PM and others. We have stand ups to discuss these issues. This case comes to me then with me knowing nothing about the system, not seeing the code (which we did not have in src control!) and ongoing issues with their VPN.
So today my PM asks about the latest on this case. She gets stroppy with me that it's probably things like this that have lost us the client and money and that we are going round in circles and it's all last minute. I've made the issues aware well in advance and the last that we discussed on the case is it'd go back to the guy in 3rd line. Since then, said PM goes on holiday etc without even giving the team a headsup to discuss said issues. She also says she will go there and get a b***ocking while "my" team hides behind our screens. This client is not shy to let their feelings known if we mess up and we've all had a bit of trouble with clients. I've also been sent to other clients by said PM and got a ticking off for poorly documented code written by outsourcers.
My manager asks what all the fuss was about (he was in a meeting and not around but said PM goes into the meeting and grasses me up!! The room has a glass wall so perhaps she should think about being a bit more sly if she will grass me up rolleyes ). One point my manager says is that only I have visibility of my cases and need to take the responsibility etc for them. While I agree the responsibility falls to me, I've raised this several times with PM and can't afford to keep doing so at the expense of actually doing any work. I've said this in an email to my manager, but one point my manager forgets is that we have case review meetings where this case has been raised and if others don't have visibility of my cases, then the whole idea of the case review meetings (or scrums as we call it, not exactly real scrum/agile) fails completely and needs to be reformed <<<< will raise this in a second email with some pertinent points I forgot.
Ultimately as a PM you take the final hit and we have all had a role in the current situation. It's not like one big mistake by me that cost the client else they would have said for sure, as she made out. 3 months to do 1 days work would cost any client and it would take a major sacrifice to win them back and regain our credibiity. I am given an estimate I have had no say at all in and just getting the code back from a dll and rewriting the codebase to make it compile and deploying it on an environment (which needed a bit of work to have the dependencies in place to test) easily took a day. As I've said in the email, the information shared today was nothing new. Said PM used to be in standups as a lot of the cases affected her in some way but she decided no longer to be in them so we need to make a second effort to tell her the cases that are impeded which effect her (she is now an Account Manager though).
In this situation is there anything I could have done better? Any advice much appreciated!
I'm sure one thing you'd point out is that it's pretty bad management to have one guy in one tier (it was just my colleague in 1st line and just me in 2nd line) as it'd give no flexibility in the team as we now see. We had 3 guys in Tier 3 but one guy has left to go into the dev team and we have a new Tier 3 guy but just for a few weeks (Way too short). Out of the 2 remaining tier 3 guys, one is going into a more "environment build and system handover" type-role.
Since I was hired 9 months ago, we've been looking for people but apparently don't pay high enough to get talent with the right experience or get guys who have been in IT for 20 years and amazing with .NET etc but not good enough with the more specialist skills we use. Yet despite these hiring troubles, we let one guy leave our team when we were already short staffed when everyone was in the team. rolleyes
To the credit of the PM, last year she did mention that she has too much work and not enough resources to assign it to and for another task I am working on under her guidance (also a bit poorly managed but not as bad) she had to ask the entire team who would like to take it on. Not particularly professional or well organised.
Thanks for any help
So I work in IT in 2nd/3rd line application support. As you can imagine, a support role can be very difficult managing so many different clients. Anyway, two weeks ago, my colleague in 1st line (and we had just one guy in 1st line) resigned without giving any notice and just called my manager. Did not serve his leave, claimed he would take his holidays when his holiday allowance probably didn't add up to a month's worth of notice period. No handover etc.
Anyway, as I am in 2nd line, all of his work comes to me. Password resets all the basic stuff. Easy stuff. However, I had my own queue of cases to work on which I was managing well and was not too much for one person. Now I have too many cases. I've given my service desk manager a msg not to assign more until I make headway on the backlog.
At the same time, before christmas a CR came in to fix a bit of code (which we did not write). It went to my colleague in 3rd line who gave an estimate of 1 day (a very foolish estimate which seems to have no slack in it) and that was commited to the client with little discussion with the PM and him. For 3 months, he could not action this case and it came to me. The logic was flawed as I was assigned the case because I had the least number of cases but it's not the count of cases, its the complexity. I had no say in the matter despite my workload and commitments being well known to my PM and others. We have stand ups to discuss these issues. This case comes to me then with me knowing nothing about the system, not seeing the code (which we did not have in src control!) and ongoing issues with their VPN.
So today my PM asks about the latest on this case. She gets stroppy with me that it's probably things like this that have lost us the client and money and that we are going round in circles and it's all last minute. I've made the issues aware well in advance and the last that we discussed on the case is it'd go back to the guy in 3rd line. Since then, said PM goes on holiday etc without even giving the team a headsup to discuss said issues. She also says she will go there and get a b***ocking while "my" team hides behind our screens. This client is not shy to let their feelings known if we mess up and we've all had a bit of trouble with clients. I've also been sent to other clients by said PM and got a ticking off for poorly documented code written by outsourcers.
My manager asks what all the fuss was about (he was in a meeting and not around but said PM goes into the meeting and grasses me up!! The room has a glass wall so perhaps she should think about being a bit more sly if she will grass me up rolleyes ). One point my manager says is that only I have visibility of my cases and need to take the responsibility etc for them. While I agree the responsibility falls to me, I've raised this several times with PM and can't afford to keep doing so at the expense of actually doing any work. I've said this in an email to my manager, but one point my manager forgets is that we have case review meetings where this case has been raised and if others don't have visibility of my cases, then the whole idea of the case review meetings (or scrums as we call it, not exactly real scrum/agile) fails completely and needs to be reformed <<<< will raise this in a second email with some pertinent points I forgot.
Ultimately as a PM you take the final hit and we have all had a role in the current situation. It's not like one big mistake by me that cost the client else they would have said for sure, as she made out. 3 months to do 1 days work would cost any client and it would take a major sacrifice to win them back and regain our credibiity. I am given an estimate I have had no say at all in and just getting the code back from a dll and rewriting the codebase to make it compile and deploying it on an environment (which needed a bit of work to have the dependencies in place to test) easily took a day. As I've said in the email, the information shared today was nothing new. Said PM used to be in standups as a lot of the cases affected her in some way but she decided no longer to be in them so we need to make a second effort to tell her the cases that are impeded which effect her (she is now an Account Manager though).
In this situation is there anything I could have done better? Any advice much appreciated!
I'm sure one thing you'd point out is that it's pretty bad management to have one guy in one tier (it was just my colleague in 1st line and just me in 2nd line) as it'd give no flexibility in the team as we now see. We had 3 guys in Tier 3 but one guy has left to go into the dev team and we have a new Tier 3 guy but just for a few weeks (Way too short). Out of the 2 remaining tier 3 guys, one is going into a more "environment build and system handover" type-role.
Since I was hired 9 months ago, we've been looking for people but apparently don't pay high enough to get talent with the right experience or get guys who have been in IT for 20 years and amazing with .NET etc but not good enough with the more specialist skills we use. Yet despite these hiring troubles, we let one guy leave our team when we were already short staffed when everyone was in the team. rolleyes
To the credit of the PM, last year she did mention that she has too much work and not enough resources to assign it to and for another task I am working on under her guidance (also a bit poorly managed but not as bad) she had to ask the entire team who would like to take it on. Not particularly professional or well organised.
Thanks for any help
Idiotic to have estimates not given by the people doing the work, used to be 3rd line app support and I only ever estimated on work I was doing myself or stuff that was very easy for others to do.
Sounds like a poorly structured support team which is unusually top heavy and doesn't have enough man power to effectively cover the work. If you feel you're not being given the support needed yourself take it up with your immediate manager, failing this go over their head.
Sounds like a poorly structured support team which is unusually top heavy and doesn't have enough man power to effectively cover the work. If you feel you're not being given the support needed yourself take it up with your immediate manager, failing this go over their head.
Z064life said:
I'm sure one thing you'd point out is that it's pretty bad management to have one guy in one tier (it was just my colleague in 1st line and just me in 2nd line) as it'd give no flexibility in the team as we now see. We had 3 guys in Tier 3 but one guy has left to go into the dev team and we have a new Tier 3 guy but just for a few weeks (Way too short). Out of the 2 remaining tier 3 guys, one is going into a more "environment build and system handover" type-role.
This is not bad management per se. This is simply a business decision to get the right number of heads to run the business. What is bad management is not understanding the risks and gaps and putting in place plans for cover where needed. This could be anything from temp cover, phone divert to cross-training and re-prioritising work. You will find in nearly every business that there are specialists who there are only one of or that the work demand does not need more than one head.You sound like you are not in a position to prioritise your workload. I would take a list cases to your manager and explain this, that you are overloaded since the 1st line guy left. Ask your manager to prioritise your jobs for you and to let you know which ones can be left undone.
When this job was passed to you, I would have immediately made it known to the PM that a 1 day estimate was someone elses' and that you will need to review the case notes before you can estimate a time/course of action to fix.
I would expect and ask that the PM should go to the helpdesk manager in future because you do not have the information or authority to decide which jobs get done and which get left.
The helpdesk manager should be able to see the length of time it takes to finish jobs/how many jobs are finished per week. If it gets into an ass kicking meeting with all the managers, I would coyly, innocently and honestly ask the helpdesk manager if they noticed a jump in resolution times/SLA breaches since the 1st line guy left because you feel overloaded. The chances are:
- they did notice a jump and did take appropriate action
- they did notice and the boss said 'no more staff'
- they did not notice because they are not doing their job properly, they are too busy etc.
In any event, not your fault, the management needs to sort it out.
When this job was passed to you, I would have immediately made it known to the PM that a 1 day estimate was someone elses' and that you will need to review the case notes before you can estimate a time/course of action to fix.
I would expect and ask that the PM should go to the helpdesk manager in future because you do not have the information or authority to decide which jobs get done and which get left.
The helpdesk manager should be able to see the length of time it takes to finish jobs/how many jobs are finished per week. If it gets into an ass kicking meeting with all the managers, I would coyly, innocently and honestly ask the helpdesk manager if they noticed a jump in resolution times/SLA breaches since the 1st line guy left because you feel overloaded. The chances are:
- they did notice a jump and did take appropriate action
- they did notice and the boss said 'no more staff'
- they did not notice because they are not doing their job properly, they are too busy etc.
In any event, not your fault, the management needs to sort it out.
Sounds like a poorly organised department and the processes in place are not conductive to going through the workload in a prioritised manner.
Ultimately either work your way into a position where by you can start to influence the decisions being made that shape the work processes and methods. Or find yourself another organisation.
Ultimately either work your way into a position where by you can start to influence the decisions being made that shape the work processes and methods. Or find yourself another organisation.
TurricanII said:
You sound like you are not in a position to prioritise your workload. I would take a list cases to your manager and explain this, that you are overloaded since the 1st line guy left. Ask your manager to prioritise your jobs for you and to let you know which ones can be left undone.
When this job was passed to you, I would have immediately made it known to the PM that a 1 day estimate was someone elses' and that you will need to review the case notes before you can estimate a time/course of action to fix.
I would expect and ask that the PM should go to the helpdesk manager in future because you do not have the information or authority to decide which jobs get done and which get left.
The helpdesk manager should be able to see the length of time it takes to finish jobs/how many jobs are finished per week. If it gets into an ass kicking meeting with all the managers, I would coyly, innocently and honestly ask the helpdesk manager if they noticed a jump in resolution times/SLA breaches since the 1st line guy left because you feel overloaded. The chances are:
- they did notice a jump and did take appropriate action
- they did notice and the boss said 'no more staff'
- they did not notice because they are not doing their job properly, they are too busy etc.
In any event, not your fault, the management needs to sort it out.
When this CR came to me, I highlighted exactly that - that the estimate is not mine and is based on assumptions I know nothing about (coming from someone else). It's a very self-centered type of way to estimate tasks and does not scale.When this job was passed to you, I would have immediately made it known to the PM that a 1 day estimate was someone elses' and that you will need to review the case notes before you can estimate a time/course of action to fix.
I would expect and ask that the PM should go to the helpdesk manager in future because you do not have the information or authority to decide which jobs get done and which get left.
The helpdesk manager should be able to see the length of time it takes to finish jobs/how many jobs are finished per week. If it gets into an ass kicking meeting with all the managers, I would coyly, innocently and honestly ask the helpdesk manager if they noticed a jump in resolution times/SLA breaches since the 1st line guy left because you feel overloaded. The chances are:
- they did notice a jump and did take appropriate action
- they did notice and the boss said 'no more staff'
- they did not notice because they are not doing their job properly, they are too busy etc.
In any event, not your fault, the management needs to sort it out.
I've vigorously let my helpdesk manager (this is not my line manager) and, to a lesser extent, my line manager know that I am overloaded and it is recognised as it's mentioned in the emails mention this. I've given warnings that further cases will fail SLAs and it's just a matter of which. End of the day, if we are short staffed and that CR was done, something else would have suffered. We lacked resource even before people left. The numbers and my words back up my workload situation.
Podie said:
In reality it's the PM's problem (I say that as a PM).
As mentioned, in future cover yourself by putting things in writing when things start to go wrong and email the relevant stakeholders. If it's not in writing, it didn't happen.
Yep I try to do this, problem is, emails fail to get responses (Even short ones that I write) compared to a quick discussion in the kitchen on a case, but I've always thought about traceability.As mentioned, in future cover yourself by putting things in writing when things start to go wrong and email the relevant stakeholders. If it's not in writing, it didn't happen.
I fully get that!
I'm a PM, and like to keep things documented as much as I can. It may be worth you sending a simple email to say 'further to our conversation' or words to that effect to cover your back? It gets tiring for both parties very quickly, but other than trust, it's the only way you can do it.
I keep all of my emails. People think it's odd, but I've often gone back to emails which are a year old, not only for information but for context.
I'm a PM, and like to keep things documented as much as I can. It may be worth you sending a simple email to say 'further to our conversation' or words to that effect to cover your back? It gets tiring for both parties very quickly, but other than trust, it's the only way you can do it.
I keep all of my emails. People think it's odd, but I've often gone back to emails which are a year old, not only for information but for context.
Emails are no substitute for a face-to-face conversation, but neither are conversations a substitute for an email trail for traceability.
Have a conversation with your manager, then follow it up with an email which documents the outcome of the discussion and asks for correction if it's not right - ie explicitly states that silence gives consent.
That way, you get the result you need, you have traceability, and your arse is covered.
Have a conversation with your manager, then follow it up with an email which documents the outcome of the discussion and asks for correction if it's not right - ie explicitly states that silence gives consent.
That way, you get the result you need, you have traceability, and your arse is covered.
Z064life said:
Yep I try to do this, problem is, emails fail to get responses (Even short ones that I write) compared to a quick discussion in the kitchen on a case, but I've always thought about traceability.
Have the conversation and follow it up with an email. "As per our earlier discussion..."
Then repeat your understanding, including who is doing what and by when, in an email.
CYA...! (Cover Your Ass - as an American colleague once said to me)
Podie said:
Have the conversation and follow it up with an email.
"As per our earlier discussion..."
Then repeat your understanding, including who is doing what and by when, in an email.
CYA...! (Cover Your Ass - as an American colleague once said to me)
Great minds... It's also quite useful sometimes as you may have misunderstood something..."As per our earlier discussion..."
Then repeat your understanding, including who is doing what and by when, in an email.
CYA...! (Cover Your Ass - as an American colleague once said to me)
Podie said:
Have the conversation and follow it up with an email.
"As per our earlier discussion..."
Then repeat your understanding, including who is doing what and by when, in an email.
CYA...! (Cover Your Ass - as an American colleague once said to me)
+1. The other party doesn't have to reply unless needed but this will serve as a written record if there are any future needs. "As per our earlier discussion..."
Then repeat your understanding, including who is doing what and by when, in an email.
CYA...! (Cover Your Ass - as an American colleague once said to me)
Pulse said:
Podie said:
Have the conversation and follow it up with an email.
"As per our earlier discussion..."
Then repeat your understanding, including who is doing what and by when, in an email.
CYA...! (Cover Your Ass - as an American colleague once said to me)
Great minds... It's also quite useful sometimes as you may have misunderstood something..."As per our earlier discussion..."
Then repeat your understanding, including who is doing what and by when, in an email.
CYA...! (Cover Your Ass - as an American colleague once said to me)
OP, as I said before - if it's not in writing, it didn't happen.
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