A Tributary of Tickets

At my current employer we’ve spent the last few months getting ready to replace our homegrown ticket system with something more able to handle the more complex organization we’ve become. The project has evolved like most projects: Talk to users, analyze needs, document requirements, find contenders, evaluate contenders with users, and select something within the budget. Or almost within budget, if you’ve got a good case.

One of the hardest things for the project team to talk about was our maintenance production process. Over the years, it has evolved. We’ve tried to keep it simple, but it’s complicated, given the range of problems being solved, all the different people who may work on any given ticket, and the overlapping cycles in a two-week schedule. One of the complexities was the different paths and routes a ticket could go and how those different paths fit on the regular schedule. To better understand the workflow and timeline and our users’ needs, I created a diagram:

Overlaying the non-linear workflow on a linear timeline was a challenge, but it helped us understand the complexity. We didn’t have to rethink it each time.

We ended up selecting Jira, by Atlassian for our ticket system. It has the right features and configurability, and it integrates well with the new intranet platform we’re standing up (Confluence, not coincidentally also by Atlassian). We like the products, but of course the problems you’re solving are different from ours. Your diagram will be different. But you knew that already, didn’t you?