Ah, I should probably give more detail there. We operate on a kind of tiering system, technicians, sysadmins, and engineers. Sysadmins and engineers are generally the ones entering tickets, and the technicians the ones working them. Generally, but not always. It works as a good reminder system too for all kinds of assorted tasks that would be easily forgotten.
I think you've made a bad assumption in that only one or two people are breaking down projects into smaller tasks - that's not the way the software is set up, and it's not the way it works in practice for us. Anyone can assign subjobs to any main job, and this happens on a pretty regular basis.
The major bonus is that it allows management to see who has the least amount of stuff they're working on and allocate time effectively. When you've got north of 20 people being managed by 2, and you can tell at a glance who has more free time, I don't think the utility of this can be overstated. It definitely makes our lives easier, and I'd like to think it helps the company make money, but I don't have a good way to quantify that.
> We operate on a kind of tiering system, technicians,
> sysadmins, and engineers. Sysadmins and engineers are
> generally the ones entering tickets, and the
> technicians the ones working them. Generally,
> but not always.
Right. In general, a sysadmin or a engineer ("someone else") decides what should get worked on, and enters it into the issue tracker. The technician is not involved in this decision making process: They just pull tasks and work to complete them.
To pull Markovitz' article back into this, the sysadmins and engineers are (I assume) able to push back on the business, providing a reality-check when plans are unrealistic, and they are the ones he's suggesting should not work off of a simple to do list.
I think you've made a bad assumption in that only one or two people are breaking down projects into smaller tasks - that's not the way the software is set up, and it's not the way it works in practice for us. Anyone can assign subjobs to any main job, and this happens on a pretty regular basis.
The major bonus is that it allows management to see who has the least amount of stuff they're working on and allocate time effectively. When you've got north of 20 people being managed by 2, and you can tell at a glance who has more free time, I don't think the utility of this can be overstated. It definitely makes our lives easier, and I'd like to think it helps the company make money, but I don't have a good way to quantify that.