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How much IT staff do you need?

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by flick66

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I am concerned on how to determine how much IT staff you need to cover your needs. Not being a fat staff neither too thin.
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by otis.armstrong

This is a subject that I hope many will weight in on as I am facing the same problem today. While I know that there is no absolute formula in this area there still must be some type of rule of thumb that we can apply logically. In our organization I am attempting to quaitfy the amount of time spent on desk top support , Server maintainance and cable plant upkeep. to determine a general guideline that I can use to forecast staffing levels as our company grows and shrinks. On initial looks it appears that we average about 20 minutes per week per desktop in use, and about 1 hour per day per server. This would lead me to believe that a staff of 1 per 113 desktops and 1 network admin per 8 servers. I welcome any insight that others may have to offer!

by jereg

I started 3 yearas ago at my current job. We had 3 servers and 50 users. It was a mess. Since that time, we've grown 2 more branches, and bought out another business. I now have 4 sites to maintain, and about 70 users, and 6 servers. I was able to install all new PCs and servers. Most of the users just use 1 application that was designed for our industry. I can handle this workload pretty well and expect I could take on more. Putting in new equipment and software solved an awful lot of problems, and the uses are comfortable with the 1 packgae they use. I usually have no more than 2 or 3 trouble calls a day, so I can spend time on websites, planning and other little jobs. If I have to support a wide range of apps, I'd never be able to handle this.

by jamesrl

A number of factors are involved in doing an adequate benchmark for support staff:client ratio.

First is the type of company. A company on the leading edge of technology, with a repidly changing technology environment needs more staff than a technologically conservative company with a fairly static environment.

As well, an environment which heavily restricts the desktop, and only releases software in a well tested and well controlled process will need fewer support resources.

You also want to look at the number and type of help desk resources - if you have a good team which have the knowledge and the tools to resolve many calls immediately, before passing them onto desktop support, you need fewer desktop resources.

The same idea goes for data centres - its not just the number of servers, but the number of admin requests, the amount of change etc which may help make for meaningful numbers.

Hope that helps.

James

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