nanog mailing list archives
Re: Engineer headcount calculations
From: Luke Parrish <lukep () centurytel net>
Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2005 08:19:35 -0500
Yes I agree, this is a topic that comes up time and time again in my conversations with other network managers, however I have yet to hear a clear way.
Luke
I don't think it is the greatest approach so I am curious to hear if there is some better ways of doing it. Glenn On 6/23/05, Luke Parrish <lukep () centurytel net> wrote: > > Measuring a customer service rep's time on a daily basis is a pretty easy > and straightforward task. You can get down to the minute by minute level of > how a CSR spends their time each day. You can also easily relate that back > to customer growth which gives you how many CSR's you need for your next > budget year. CSR's have a set of tasks to complete that rarely change day > to day. > > However, what about a network engineer? > > A day in the life of an engineer: > > outage resolution > proactive projects(some 2 hours and some 300 hours) > reactive projects(some 2 hours and some 300 hours) > customer escalation > escalated network issue > maintenance windows > writing/researching change management > time spent in lab researching network issues > turning up new service > planning for new service > turning down old service > taking phone calls from internal business units needing support > configuring interfaces for new dedicated customers > ip administration(sometimes 3 minutes per request sometimes 2 days of > justification on a request) > equipment upgrades > TAC research > equipment evaluation > reports > shipping equipment > boxing equipment > meetings > > etc etc etc etc etc etc, everyone knows where I am going. > > So the million dollar question, how do you account for their time to prove > in a business case that you need to add additional headcount. If you plan > on adding 110,000 DSL subs next year then we all know that we have to add > engineers to support the network that will have to be built. However, how > do you prove that with numbers? > > I can say, I have to turn up 250 new DSLAMs, 60 new routers, 18 new > internet drains, etc etc which I can easily relate back to manhours for > turnup. However how do you allocate manhours to maintenance of the network? > There are some easy ones, 1 IOS upgrade a year times number of devices on > the network, 1 bandwidth upgrade per year times number of CO's, etc etc. > But what about the day to day that I listed above? > > We have to sell this idea to accountants, not other engineers, they only > see numbers on paper. Its easy to all of us, we know how many people we > need, but how do you put a business case together to sell it? > > Can anyone out there share what type of system they use to account for > engineers time, or really any insight at all would be helpful. > > One answer would be a system that the engineer would open and close time > based tickets everytime they made a move during the day. However I dont > know many network engineers at the enable level that are restricted this > way, however it is an option. > > luke > > > > > > >
Luke Parrish Centurytel Internet Operations 318-330-6661
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