ABSTRACT
How many products does your technical team support? Including the operating system, applications environment, systems hardware, a couple of types of printer, say four or five business applications packages, several add-on bits and pieces hard and soft – the figure typically comes out to around the 30 mark. For each of those supported items, any one of your technicians will be able to claim a level of knowledge anywhere between total ignorance and absolute guru status and a few points in between; let us say five possible levels of knowledge. If your helpdesk has six people in it, then you have 30 × 5 × 6 or 900 permutations of product by knowledge level by knowledge holder. With 900 points to go at, how could you ever be sure that you have deployed the right level of expert at the right time in the right place?
