Are you overworked, unappreciated and under-resourced? This book understands you, and provides years and years of User Support experience packed into one volume. The `How To' book that every I.T. department needs, it will help turn your helpdesk into a company asset. How to be successful at probably the most stressful job in I.T! This book offers tools for measuring productivity and features ten key steps for successful support, while User Support successes and failures are revealed in true life case studies.

`This book won't tell you how to get your printer working with your word processor - it's better than that. It tells you how to deploy your Support staff so as to have the best chance of preventing or fixing such problems. If you're in charge of a PC Support group, or would like to be one day, get this book and read it.' - Dr. Alan Solomon

This book gives you techniques for:
· Justifying staff and other expenditure
· Gaining senior management support
· Getting the users on your side
· Running a motivated and productive team
· Designing and managing services and service levels

How to manage the I.T. helpdesk will help you design and launch your helpdesk and Support services, measure their success and ensure user's satisfaction.

This book:
· contains 30 chapters, 18 real-life case studies, 10 life maxims and 19 figures
· agrees with Lee Iacocca but it has the nerve to disagree with Tom Peters
· is a significant talking point on the Internet
· is the result of over 15 years real experience, so it is practical and nitty gritty
· is part of the `Computer Weekly Professional' series

Noel Bruton is a specialist consultant and trainer with over fifteen years' experience in the support and helpdesk industries. He writes with knowledge, experience, pragmatism and enthusiasm. Visit the authors' WWW page for Helpdesk managers at http://www.pcug.co.uk/~bruton/

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The book is divided into six parts, each with numerous short chapters and case studies. I found this organization to make for easy reading. Among the gems that I particularity liked are how the author defines business goals early on, the description of a typical support structures and support scenarios. Other highlights, in my opinion, are: Part 3, Service Level Management, which is one of the most concise treatments of the subject I have had the pleasure of reading; Part 3, Workload Management, which contained excellent ideas on prioritizing and managing jobs, metrics and reports and processes. This is excellent material. I also got a lot out of Part 5, Resource Management, which provides some good foundation material for determining total cost of ownership (TCO). This part gives you some great ideas on determining support costs and justifying them, and asset and inventory management. Part 6, Staff Management, provides some fresh thoughts about this necessary factor of help desk management.

I have read (and reviewed) a large number of books on technical support and help desks. Some of these books addressed topics in a lot more depth, while others focused a particular aspect of help desk operations, technical support of problem management. While I found all to be valuable, "How to Manage the IT Help Desk" distilled all of the "meat" into an easy-to-read quick reference and idea jogger. It earns a solid 5 stars and deserves a spot on every support professional's bookshelf.

4 of 5 found the following review helpful:

IT REALITY SETTLES INJun 20, 2001
By Susan Kemp Walker
This book is well-written and gives very good tips on running a helpdesk effectively. The emphasis on realistic goals and end results are for our real IT world. I would reccomend this book highly!