Why MSPs should visualize their work

In an earlier post, Wim covered how to start visualizing your work. The short version: start as simple as you can but no simpler, start with what you are doing today, show the real status of each piece of work, and keep to-do lists short.

That covers the what. This post is about the why, and about what it looks like on an MSP’s service desk.

Picturing the goal, and picturing the steps

In an article on visualization and goals, Frank Niles describes visualization as creating a mental image of something that has not happened yet. That sounds like the opposite of Kanban, which is about seeing what you are doing today. Niles separates two kinds:

• Outcome visualization pictures the goal: the project finished, the backlog (the list of work waiting to start) cleared.
• Process visualization pictures the steps that get you there.

Kanban is process visualization. You take the end goal, break it into small steps, and put each step where the whole team can see it. Then you pay more attention to the next step than to the goal itself.

The same idea works outside IT. A construction manager succeeds by seeing and finishing one floor at a time, not by staring at the architect’s rendering. A runner in a 10K does better by thinking about the next kilometre than the finish line.

Why it matters on a service desk

An MSP’s PSA holds every ticket, but as a list. A list hides the things a manager most needs to see:

• Where work is stuck. A ticket that has sat in one status for a week looks the same in a list as one opened this morning.
• Who is overloaded. Twenty tickets assigned to one technician and three to another are hard to spot until a client complains.
• What is waiting on someone else. Tickets waiting for a client reply, a vendor or an approval mix in with work the team can do now.
• How much is started and not finished. Half-done tickets earn nothing, and a list does not show how many there are.

On a board, each of these is visible at a glance. Matthew Kaufman, CEO of KaufmanIT, saw this the first time his team looked at their tickets that way:

“It’s weird that this is the exact same data in a new visual form, but suddenly everybody knows which tickets should have been closed when they didn’t just with ConnectWise Manage.”

His team closed 300 of 450 stale tickets in one week once they could see them.

How to put a service desk on a board

Start with columns that match how work actually moves, using the statuses you already have in your PSA:

1. New: tickets nobody has looked at yet.
2. Ready: triaged and ranked, waiting for the next free technician.
3. In progress: someone is working on it now.
4. Waiting: the team has done its part and is waiting on a client, a vendor or an approval.
5. Scheduled: the next step happens at a set time, such as an on-site visit.
6. Done: finished this week, so the team can see what it completed.

Then add swimlanes, one per technician, so each person’s load sits in its own row. Set a limit on how many cards can be in progress at once, and look at the board together for a few minutes every day.

You can start this on a whiteboard with sticky notes. Once the team has the habit, a board fed by the PSA saves copying every ticket by hand. In TopLeft, columns map to your existing PSA statuses, so nothing in ConnectWise, Autotask or HaloPSA has to change to get started.

Start with today

You do not need a perfect board on day one. Put today’s work up, show its real status, and fix the first thing it shows you. Next week the board will show you the next thing.

Book a demo to see a service desk on a live board.