Statistical process control for engineering IT support incident life cycle

Abstract

IT support incident life cycle activities can be complex in the engineering sector. These activities include logging the incident, testing, detailing, planning, coding, reviewing, and more testing. Inadequate knowledge of the IT support life cycle results in lowered support effectiveness and unnecessary costs. This not only delays the execution of the project but may also invite dissatisfaction from clients. Customer satisfaction in this world of rapidly changing advanced technology has become a challenge and one of the most important criteria and driving forces for the engineering industry. Customers of an engineering company must be satisfied with the quality, efficiency, budget and delivery of the work. In present day scenarios, information technology support plays an important part in all of the above factors and accordingly the requirement to do an in-depth study on the IT support processes itself. This paper examines different types of IT support incidents and their impact on the information technology support life cycle. Processing times for each element of the IT support process was collected for different types of IT support issues. This data was used to create a Statistical Process Control (SPC) chart to help evaluate the effectiveness of the present IT support system. If the IT support system is out of control, IT support management can determine the nature and cause of the failure so that action can be taken in time. Effective IT support management involves proactively managing each of these activities. The major contribution of this work is that it will point out critical elements in the IT support process and guide management to allocate its resources effectively. This SPC system will help IT support management to determine the nature and cause of the failures so that they can be corrected in time. This will also help engineering companies to allocate a proper budget for their IT support department. Lastly, this information can be used in early quotations and planning to avoid cost overrun and revenue losses.