Triage Team Design

Planning needs to be done around how and when problems are approached and solved to make the most effective use of Tier 3 resources. Depending on the size of your organization, types of problems to be solved, and expectations on resolution time: the approaches can vary. Its best to go over all of the factors involved and decide what will be the most efficient approach for the team.

Choose a problem solving strategy which will have the shortest resolution times, fastest first response times, and also one which considers the people involved: their training level and workloads.

Blended Teams

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A balanced approach to triaging issues is to have a team with a variety of backgrounds. What you are looking for is people with the range of skillsets. With these areas of knowledge you get these specialists looking at an issue from their unique perspective.

• Development

• Databases

• IT / Infrastructure

• Business specialists

Approaches

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Here are some of the approaches I have used in the past. Its worth having all of these at your disposal depending on the situation and time / resource constraints.

• Single engineer triage. I have not found this to be a terribly effective approach except for receptive tasks and simple reporting or data analysis. It usually takes more than one set of eyes of effectively look at an issue.

• Peer triage. When you are stuck on an issue or need additional expertise on how to solve a problem working with a colleague helps. Its also good to use this method as it can result in faster resolution times.

• Intelligence swarming / mobbing triage. This is probably the most effective way of triaging issues when you are a medium to large sized business. Oftentimes in order to be able to understand an issue completely you need the balanced perspective of the team to fully understand all ramifications of the issue, and come up with a thought out diagnosis and solution.

• Developer pairing. When swarming has failed to understand the root cause of an issue, its always prudent to bring in someone who is familiar with the code base and can get you definitive answers on how the software is currently coded and should be behaving.

Applying Approaches to Types

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First off lets consider the types of problems which are likely to come across your queue as some of them will dictate different kinds of responses.

• UI issues. Any kinds of problems customers are having with a user interface including: missing fields or buttons, errors or non functional components. Its not always clear the root cause of these issues and pairing or mobbing usually gets you a correct diagnosis.

• Data problems. These usually include: incorrect or missing data, stuck transactions. Oftentimes mobbing is the best approach for these issues as the sources of data issues can be convoluted.

• API issues. For customers who are having problems with connecting, authenticating, making requests or getting responses back. Mobbing can work best in these solutions to fully understand the issue.

• Reporting. Used when one off custom views of data are needed for further analysis or reporting on an issue. Someone with database experience can usually complete these tasks alone.

• Clarifications. If there is confusion on how a part of the software works or on the data being returned. These can often be sent to product / business specialists who are domain experts.

• Feature requests. When customers or internal users are requesting new functionality be added to the software to better suit their business needs. Usually these do not need any sort of triage but can be passed directly to product managers for evaluation.