How to Quantify

Troubleshooting Skill

IT

Troubleshooting Management

Service Desk metrics measure

Analyst’s technical performance

based on one thing, problem

duration.

Time when problem was

reported or escalated

Time when problem was

resolved

Problem Duration

Let me show you why using problem duration as a base for technical performance is inaccurate.

Technician A got this problem and resolved it.

Problem duration = 60 minutes

Technician B got this problem and resolved it.

Problem duration = 60 minutes

Using Service Desk metrics

=

Technician A performance Technician B performance

Lets break down the process involved in resolving any kind of technical problem.

1) Analyze: gather problem information

2) Troubleshoot: deduct and isolate suspect components until problem fault is identified

3) Fix: Apply problem fix

Analyze Troubleshoot Fix

Problem Duration

Lets write this as an equation:

Analyze + Troubleshoot + Fix = Problem duration

Using the previous problem example:

Technician A : Analyze + Troubleshoot + Fix = 60 minutes

Technician B : Analyze + Troubleshoot + Fix = 60 minutes

Upon reading the problem resolution description,

Technician A fixed the problem by changing

user profile on the Server.

Fix took 5 minutes to perform.

Upon reading the problem resolution description,

Technician B fixed the problem by decrypting a

1 gig file.

Fix took 15 minutes to perform.

Technician A Timeline

Technician B Timeline

Analyze Troubleshoot Fix = 5 min

Analyze Troubleshoot Fix = 15 min

Using our present equation

Problem duration – Fix Time = Time problem was identified

Analyze + Troubleshoot + Fix = Problem duration

We rewrite the equation to show

when problem was identified

Technician A Timeline

Analyze Troubleshoot Fix = 5 min

At 55 minutes, problem cause was identified.

60 min (Problem Duration) – 5 min (Fix Time) = 55 minutes

Technician B Timeline

Analyze Troubleshoot Fix = 15 min

At 45 minutes, problem cause was identified.

60 min (Problem Duration) – 15 min (Fix Time) = 45 minutes

Technician A identified

problem in 55 minutes

Technician B identified

problem in 45 minutes

Technician B performed better than Technician A

How do you measure one’s

troubleshooting efficiency ?

Get the time duration when problem was identified and divide that by total number of potential faults (components deducted and isolated).

Easy

Here is a Win7 issue

Example:

Per the problem resolution description, it is a Windows 7 Networking problem.

Here are the 14 possible network faults in Windows 7

IP address NIC driver

TCP/IP Stack Domain Name

DNS Workgroup Name

DHCP Machine Name

Network discovery Default Gateway

NIC software switch Subnet Mask

Motherboard NIC MAC Address

If the problem duration was 90 minutes and fix time was 10 minutes.

Using our equation, problem was identified at 80 minutes.

80 minutes / 14 components = 5.7 minutes

per component deducted and isolated

This is troubleshooting efficiency.

Deducting or isolating a component every 5.7 minutes is not efficient troubleshooting.

It’s like rebooting the system every time a potential fault is deducted or isolated.

Ideally, 50% of the potential faults should have been eliminated in the first 2 minutes by deduction.

The remaining suspect faults can be efficiently isolated between 1 to 3 minutes per fault.

So that’s 2 minutes to deduct the possible 7 network faults.

1 to 3 minutes for each of the remaining 7 faults.

Ideal troubleshooting time range is 9 minutes to 23 minutes.

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