Stephan Covey introduces a time management matrix in his well-known book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”. I will describe IT support operations using the quadrant matrix below.
Quadrant 1(Q1) includes critical inquiries, important questions, tasks near deadlines, complaint handling, etc. Many tasks in the quadrant provide opportunities to develop IT support skills. However, the tasks can cause big stress and burn-out. Those tasks need to be managed by the work of Quadrant2.
Generally Quadrant 2 (Q2) covers preparation, long-term planning, prevention, improvement, team building, and personal life. For IT support, those mean long-term planning to provide higher quality IT support to customers, planning IT support work in Q1 and Q3 (which require less resources), improvement of IT support methods, and team building to create an effective team for group goals. As a result of Q2, IT support can create a less stressful work environment, control inquiries, handle inquiries with rules, and balance work and personal life.
Quadrant (Q3) activities are urgent and unimportant. The activities are some inquiries, some meetings, some reports to stakeholders, and so on, which the customers expect to be worked on as high priority, although the activities are not important. IT support needs to control Q3 activities and not spend too much unnecessary time. Focusing on Q3 activities results in short-term goal focus, loss of control, and complaints from IT support professionals.
Quadrant 4 (Q4) includes some inquiries/meetings and excessive internet surfing, which are time-wasting activities and need to be eliminated as much as possible. The results of the activities are dependent on others and total irresponsibility.
For resource management, it is effective to implement automation, which helps to handle Quadrant 1 operations. By enriching resources for Tier 0, customers resolve their problems by themselves using provided resources described in “IT Support.” As such, IT support can reduce the operation time of Quadrant 3. Also, with proper rules and system implementation, the activities in Quadrant 1 will be more manageable.