Getting More Work Out Of Work Tracking Systems

This paper discusses work initially done for SRI International's Information, Telecommunication, and Automation Division (ITAD). ITAD's computer facility staff originally implemented a work tracking system to avoid the embarrassment of discovering that some important user problem had been brought to their attention and then entirely forgotten. Over the years, the system also began to address more complex tasks, and is now used to deal with some problems before users report them, to better communicate with the users about the amount of work being done, and to get those minor housekeeping chores that kept accumulating done at last. This paper explains how.