Category: Education

World class IT support

I attended a talk by James Stanger from CompTIA at the SITS17 conference in 2017 (I totally forgot I’d written these notes until now). He talked a lot about the sort of skills and knowledge that world class Service Desk staff needed to have, and it dovetailed nicely with a list I drew up myself a couple of years earlier, and also with ideas from other presentations from the same conference.

What follows is notes I took at the time (with my observations in italics)

Tech support today

  • Evolving endpoint – IOT
  • Analytics
  • Automation
  • The cloud and mobility – BYOD
  • Cyber / security
  • Complexity of privacy
  • Device diversity
  • We are all knowledge workers

Helpdesk are the frost line of defence against security.
More Mac and Linux now than 10 years ago.
More business units than ever before
Service desk and service management is a growing industry and there are more jobs available. This should be an increasing trend.
Need a more diverse skills set – increase in cloud, and move from Helpdesk to service desk.

Technical skills that Service Desk staff need

  • Security
  • Database
  • PC
  • Storage
  • Backups
  • Cloud
  • Telecoms
  • Web dev
  • Server
  • Mobile
  • Etc.

Top skills

  • Troubleshooting
  • App management
  • PC
  • Security
  • Data
  • Mobility
  • Repair
  • Ticketing
  • Cloud
  • Permissions and directory services

It’s about accessing data from any device rather than the device itself. The device breaks, then you just try and access it on another device.

Five essential skills

  1. Cybersecurity
  2. Linux
  3. Programming – shell scripts and python
  4. Networking – TCP/IP, network segmentation, VPN
  5. Soft skills – customer service mindset, project management, ability to turn negatives into positives.

Can we take these 5 skills and turn them into a blueprint for the sort of person we want to recruit into IT support roles (and I’m talking across the institution here, not just Service Desk people)? Should also add some stuff from the other lists though – especially around cloud, troubleshooting and application management. Do our people need to be lesss skilled but more knowledgeable? Or is it just that they need to be skilled and knowledgeable about different things?

I look at this list and see a lot of things that have previously been on our “nice to have” list. Things like cybersecurity, Linux and the ability to script solutions to IT problems have never been things we have tried to recruit at first line, and maybe even most second line teams. That is going to have to change if we are going to meet the demands of our customers and provide the sort of service they need from us.

Other things:

We want someone who loves problems

Can this person really look beneath the hood?

Can they see around the corners of a problem? Trend analysis and documenting new things and fixes to hard problems.

Hackers will go after the points where one technology interacts with another (where people are a technology – interface between people and technology is a big vulnerability).

Security trends

  • Notice the unknown (Ransomware, social engineering etc.)
  • Zero day attacks
  • Malware

Top security skills

The usual, plus social engineering, authentication methods.

Attacks occur where people and technology converge. This isn’t news.

We have too much information, too much data, if we had less there would be less to attack.

A good Helpdesk person will spot trends in security, and will help visualise data in a way that other people can understand.

Multi factor authentication – something you know and something you hold. 3rd factor is something you are (fingerprint, iris scan, face etc.)

Understanding monitoring and performance via command line tools is an important skill. All the stuff I have been talking about for years.

Saying things the right way is absolutely vital. Change geek speak into plain language. This is a key skill.

Give suggestions / say no / transfer a call

  • Identify the problem
  • Define the problem
  • Explore and examine the options
  • Act on the solutions
  • Look back at the solution and the consequences, or learn from the problem.

80% technical, 20% soft skills. And technical skills are much easier to teach, so recruit people who already have the soft skills.

10 things beginning with S

There is a meme going round where people are asked to name 10 things beginning with a certain letter that mean something to them. I was given the letter S, and will attempt to come up with 10 things that are not people I know ( I could probably add another 10 if I include people, and I’m always wary of missing people out).

1. Spotify – It’s revolutionised the way I listen to music, and also the way I discover music to a certain extent. Before Spotify I always had to own things I like, and now I find I am perfectly content with streaming music. I also like the fact that I can save songs to my phone/iPad for offline listening. Not that I’m ever offline for long, but the functionality is very useful for those times when I am.

2. Sennheiser – Both sets of headphones I use at the moment were made by Sennheiser, and I suppose I have a certain amount of brand loyalty. I particularly like times when I’m able to wear my huge over-ear headphones, but am increasingly finding that they are too bulky for anything but listening to music in the house.

3. Substance – Two great compilation albums from the 80s – one by New Order and one by Joy Division. Between them they contain some of the best music I’ve ever heard, and tell the story of one of the most interesting (and tragic) musical transitions.

4. Sunrise – I like the sun. I like it being light and being sunny. The sun energises me, and the rising of the sun (which I see all too often) is something that I really like to watch and occasionally photograph. Sunrise is also the name of the calendar app I use on my Mac and iPad to keep my life organised, as well as being the name of a New Order song I really like.

5. Slackware – Not the first Linux distro I installed myself (that honour goes to Debian), but the one that lead to me learning a lot about how computers work when I was cramming IT knowledge into my brain about 10 years ago.

6. Sonic Youth – A band that have been with me since I was at school. They were probably my introduction to American guitar music, but also to the avant-garde. I could probably also say the same about Swans, who I discovered around the same time.

7. Summer – My favourite season, and the season I was born in.

8. Sideways – I’m astrologically Cancerian, which I supposed to mean I’m good at moving forwards whilst appearing to move sideways. I can relate to that, and  very much see it as a viable way to move through life.

9. Study – I like to study new things, and have really never stopped learning new things since I left University. I also have a physical study now – it’s the smallest front bedroom in our house, and it allows me to have somewhere to read, write, listen to music, and otherwise interact with things in an environment that I can totally control.

10. Sleep – I’m one of those strange people who doesn’t really enjoy sleep. It’s not that I sleep badly, or have particularly horrible dreams, I would just rather be awake, upright, and doing something.

Coming soon…

I have so many things I want to write about right now. Starting with some of the really productive conversations I’ve been having with staff and students about how they use IT, and ending with everything I’ve learned over the last few days at the UCISA conference in Edinburgh. I reckon that’s probably at least a few thousand words of writing, but as I’ve got a few other things to get finished first, I thought I’d at least make a list for my own benefit.

  1. The move towards phones and tablets and away from traditional computers, and what this means for service delivery and support.
  2. Why job descriptions, job titles, and what we actually DO at work should be as closely aligned as possible.
  3. Balancing innovation and stability.
  4. Google Apps, live@edu, and email for life.

I think that covers most of it for now.