The "scientific" way to do this would be to list tasks per admin and
how many hrs/week spent on given tasks you anticipate. Then figure
the number of people you need from there. But, that's not as exciting
as idle speculation, so here we go...
Another important question to ask yourself is, "How long are you
willing to have systems down if there is a failure?" or said another
way, you need to identify your required level of service. Why does
this matter? Well, are you staffing for the unlikely event that all
50 sites have incidents on the same day and all must return to
function in the same day... or, are you staffing for a team that rolls
through incidents on a priority basis... some high-priority items
fixed in hours, some low priority items fixed in weeks? Do you need
8hr/5day staffing or 24hr/7day staffing?
When you added details, it seemed like you are planning to have one
admin at each site. If they aren't doing helpdesk work and helping
users, this person is likely not to be very busy. I recently managed
a network of two locations, 9 servers, two T1 lines, telecom switch,
90 workstations, and 20 laptops and remote/home users. Once things
are setup and functioning, I think I spent 8 hours a week at most on
network issues... the majority of time is spent with Helpdesk/Desktop
issues, which you indicate is not part of the job description for this
tech.
Given that, let's say that each tech could handle ten sites... that
would indicate hiring 5 techs, plus management and remote. Budget for
3 extra, in case you find you need help. Perhaps that's a nice number
to start with, measure the results, and increase staff if needed. It
might break down like this:
1 IT Manager (rare travel)
1 Remote Operations Tech (rare travel, assists IT Manager)
1 Sr. Traveling Tech (reserved for crisis, handles Remote Ops
overflow, assists field staff remotely)
4 Traveling Tech (generally on the road, rarely at home office)
2 Open Reqs for Traveling Tech (have these budgeted, but don't hire)
1 Open Req for Remote Operations Tech
The traveling tech should only be dispatched for new workstation
installations or physical failures, correct? Are you doing remote
backup, or does a tech need to visit each site weekly to pick up
backups? Daily? Monthly? Again, a decision needs to be made about
level of service desired. Is it the tech's job to put paper in the
printer, replace toner cartridges, deal with phone outages... all this
must be decided. If it's something the receptionist can be trained to
do, go that route.
If you end up hiring more techs (because someone decides each site
must have a tech at all times) consider breaking these techs into
specialty teams, so they have their on-site duties, and then areas of
specialty training (a particular type of OS or software package,
networking, etc.)
Another way you might do it is to have staff members rotate either
daily or weekly into the Remote Ops position where they don't travel
during that time. I can't tell if all sites are no more than 1.5 hrs
from a central office, or if the two offices furthest from each other
are 1.5 hrs from each other (makes a big difference). If it's a 1.5
hr radius from the central office, that's a big radius. You might
need to organize your techs by geographic clumps of sites. Perhaps
some techs live near the more remote areas and don't really want to
come into the main office. Each clump might have a satellite office
for one "regional clump" tech that he can call home when he's not
travelling between sites.
This all needs to be actively managed, and you need the input of your
IT manager. Perhaps the IT manager or you believes that you should
staff so that workers have 3 days in the home office (for training or
hatred of driving) 2 days on the road, with exceptions made for
crises. That's yet another staffing model.
I guess there are a lot of different ways to do this. The IT manager
will need to actively manage this, and balance the preferences of the
staff and upper management.
Finally, of course, what can your budget handle? This as much as
anything may dictate the answers about number of staffers and the
quality of service you can afford. I will say this, in my experience,
it's better to staff in a manner that keeps people occupied and
busy... adding more people if needed; rather than overstaffing and
then cutting back. Once people become accustomed to having a lot of
help and less to do, it can be difficult to switch to a busy pace
without feeling abused and resentful.
Hopefully this free advice has been worth more than nothing... <grin>
You may find these interesting:
Gartner Group study of support costs for dual-platform environment.
Note: They assign .025 FTEs per desktop and find a range
18/PCs-per-tech to 77/PCs-per-tech. If you had 1500PCs to manage,
according to their figures, you would hire between 20 and 80 techs.
But, note that includes user desktop support.
http://www.bobrk.com/lmms/mac/gartner.html
Compaq offers a Total Cost of Ownership report with breakdowns from
Gartner and Forrester research. They assign 34% of IT budget to
Admin/Tech Support.
http://www.compaq.com/tco/models.html
The magic 34% number is found again in a 2001 survey found in this
Internet.com article, "IT, Network Spending Headed Up, Despite
Economic Slowdown" by Michael Pastore:
http://cyberatlas.internet.com/big_picture/hardware/article/0,,5921_582631,00.html |
