How to track and manage ad-hoc requests at work?

[ChristinaNL]

Does anyone have similar complaints from colleagues that too many ad-hoc requests come their way and they are swamped by those unplanned things. Now i'm charged to help my co-workers to capture and track these requests. The purpose of this exercise is to inventorize and visualise how much time we time on ad-hoc things, and which categories those requests are.
However, i'm struggling to find a good tool/ method to achieve this.
Any advices?
Thanks in advance!

 

[Folke]

I think this situation exists to some extent in all organizations. It is sometimes even desirable - for example if new customers call and want to order something. The problem is if the TYPE of request was not expected and therefore neither budgeted for nor prepared for in terms of having trained staff, information and other resources available.

I think if I were you I would not turn this into a big data collection exercise at first. I would start simple and just interview your colleagues one by one and ask them to try to recall and describe from memory what kinds of such cases they have had in the past few weeks. Ask them:

Who did the request come from? (customer? other department? etc)
What kind of help did they request?
When did this happen (any particular weekday, time of day, season etc?)
Why did they need it? Why did they chose to ask your team?
How much time did it take? How was it done (with what types of resources, expenses etc)?

From there you can probably identify the main types of requesters, the main reasons why they ask your team, and begin to sketch what it would take for your team (in terms of staff, equipment, money etc) to be able to handle this efficiently on a permanent basis.

If you need more data to be able to draw those conclusions or convince others, you could ask your colleagues to remember older cases, too, and if that is still not enough you can begin to collect additional fresh data from your colleagues from now on, say by interviewing them again every few weeks or so for a few months (and/or gradually try to switch to written reporting via a form with headlines, specific questions etc, but there is a risk that people can become sloppy when it starts to feel too formalized and rigid).

 

[Oogiem]

Now i'm charged to help my co-workers to capture and track these requests. The purpose of this exercise is to inventorize and visualise how much time we time on ad-hoc things, and which categories those requests are.

Since the question isn't about how to get back on track after an interruption but rather how to document how many interruptions there are and how much time you spend on them I'd suggest some sort of paper tracking system. Each time an interruption starts jot a note as to who and what, 1-2 words at most and a time and a time at the end and then see where you are after a week and again after a month. Most businesses I've been in the flow of interruptions is cyclical but the cycle is on a month not a shorter basis (monthly reports due etc)

Once you have the data then analyze it to see if there are recurring issues that can be helped by a checklist or a new procedure or something.

 

[Roger]

I'd tend to look at those businesses that are built around this sort of work.

The restaurant business comes to mind. They're figured out a pretty robust system to handle ad-hoc orders; maybe there's something there to be inspired by.

 

[Gardener]

I'm not clear on the task. Is this primarily:

- gathering data so that you can tell your manager, "Our workers get an average of fourteen interruptions a day! You have to do something!"

- doing the "do something!"

Either way, I think that one of the most important parts is that the tracking be as easy as humanly possible for the individual in the moment, EVEN IF that means that someone else has to do some work later.

For example, if it's a pure data-gathering task, then rather than requiring that people log into a database and enter six required fields, let them send an email with just a few words ("info request from HR") to a specific address. That could mean that someone has to sit down for two hours every week to paw through those emails and figure out what they mean and enter them into a database or spreadsheet, but that's one task performed by a person who knows the task, and is likely to waste fewer total personnel minutes than repeated instances of "What's that database again?", "Dang, I forgot my password", "What am I supposed to enter in this field again?", "Oops; I haven't entered any interruptions at all into the database this week. I'll just make some up."

Digression: This is part of an overall pet peeve of mine, where businesses try to make a task more distributed than it absolutely must be, on the theory that it will save time, when it actually costs time. It makes sense to think that each person should do his own bleeping paperwork, but it's often better to have someone else, someone for whom that paperwork is closer to the core of their job, do it instead. If there's no obvious or fair candidate, one member of a team could be the paperwork person for three or six or twelve months at a time.

 

[YoIDidIt]

Does anyone have similar complaints from colleagues that too many ad-hoc requests come their way and they are swamped by those unplanned things. Now i'm charged to help my co-workers to capture and track these requests. The purpose of this exercise is to inventorize and visualise how much time we time on ad-hoc things, and which categories those requests are.
However, i'm struggling to find a good tool/ method to achieve this.
Any advices?
Thanks in advance!

This is what you might be looking for www.tasktrackingtool.com. I created this service, this is a project and task management tool that will help you create unlimited projects and tasks. Any adhoc requests that come your way can be added immediately to this tool and then you process them based on priority.

I myself use this at work and personally, and have been able to be a lot more organised since.

Let me know if you have any questions.

 

[Dave Edwards]

Now i'm charged to help my co-workers to capture and track these requests. The purpose of this exercise is to inventorize and visualise how much time we time on ad-hoc things, and which categories those requests are.

Two thoughts......

If all you want to do is keep track of how much time is spent on ad-hoc things, it seems that a simple log of such requests might work. You could log such requests on a master sheet of paper or in a digital doc.

If you are asking how to process ad hoc requests, my advice is to ask the person to send you an email. Then you can process the emails into your system the way you would process any other request which requires your attention.

Good luck.

Dave

 

[Gardener]

If all you want to do is keep track of how much time is spent on ad-hoc things, it seems that a simple log of such requests might work. You could log such requests on a master sheet of paper or in a digital doc.

I don't disagree with the above at all, but I wanted to note that the issue for ad hoc requests is generally not only the time spent on the request, but on the time "invisibly" lost in task switching. Some sources argue that it takes fifteen or twenty minutes to become re-absorbed in a task after an interruption and that those minutes are effectively lost. Other sources argue that for programming, at least, only uninterrupted full hours really count. (Or was it two hours? Or four hour blocks? My various sources aren't handy.)

In any case, Interruptions Bad. Rearranging the work so that those "ad hoc" requests are all gathered together and become a planned combined task, rather than a series of interruptions, is a possible strategy. Everyone could have office hours that are the only time that they accept interruptions, one person in a group that has common skills could be the sacrificial interrupt-ee for the day, something of that sort.