Issue Tracking

[Rick]

At the meeting we talked about “issue tracking” and the idea of a
“help desk” – or something like that.

As I mentioned, I am familiar with what the open source software world
uses for this, where issues are posted and anyone can jump in and
“fix” the issue. The issue could be a bug in the code, and the fix is
to write a patch for the code to fix the bug, or the issue could be a
feature request or just a question.

Here is the issue queue for the open source software that ARPS uses
for its website (Drupal):
http://drupal.org/project/issues/drupal

Issues are categorized. If one is logged into the system, one can
assign oneself to fix the issue. You can see that there are a large
number of issues with the next version of Drupal to come out (7).
They will all get fixed by the vast army of volunteers working on
this. That is the power of the “crowd” that Baer spoke about at the
meeting.

Whether or not a system like that would work for school issues, I
don’t know, but it would be very cool if it could.

Anyhow, just FYI.

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[Rick]

One thing I feel pretty strongly about is that we need to somehow
better document issues that people are having. It drives me nuts to
hear various anecdotes about people having issues, as opposed to
having good data on how may people are having the same issue.

Many issues are sort of “one-time-only” issues between, for example, a
parent and a teacher that can be resolved (or not) between them. Then
there are more general issues that a lot of people may be having, such
as for example, “it’s hard to figure out what path to take for ARHS
math” – or something like that.

But for any of these cases, it seems to me that this works:

1. Document the issue (open the issue).
2. Track issue resolution.
3. Escalate the issue if it does not get resolved.
4. Close the issue.

”Close” means that the issue is done with and an answer has been
given. It may or may not be an answer that satisfies all parties, but
it’s a documented answer, which is important.

This should not be a public system. One thing that comes to mind is
that perhaps users can see their own issues, but not other issues, and
only certain ARPS personnel can see all issues.

[Baer]

It seems to me that we are really talking about two different
problems:

1. Individual issues that parents would like ARPS to take action on.
This could be a request for info, a request of a teacher, feedback,
ideas, etc. These tend to be personal and focused on a kid. A
traditional issue tracking system works well for this, but the
important aspect is buy-in from ARPS to dedicate staff to using it.
Traditionally this type of implementation is core to staff workflow,
so it really needs to be built into their daily work routines. I
wonder if PowerSchool has such a system already?

2. The other area I see is an effective tool to enable the community
to support each other. A place to pose questions, post information,
ask for help, give ideas, brainstorm strategy, give feedback. An
example of this is getsatisfaction.com
http://www.getsatisfaction.com/why/#how
which has been used extensively in the private sector to connect
customers and employees of companies to create a community that works
together. This is already being done to some degree with the PGO
Blogs - the editors are continually combing the community for
information and editing/posting it. This is a good one-way flow of
information, but only one-way and pretty limited in that we don't have
nearly the reach that the entire community does in knowing things!

So I guess I see two different things - one is an internal ARPS
workflow management process/tool and one is a community process/tool.

Thoughts?

B

[Rick]

Good thoughts. Yes could be two different systems.

I just posted a PDF with related thoughts. See: HOW TO HANDLE
ISSUES.pdf

On May 10, 12:43 pm, Baer <baertier...@gmail.com> wrote:
> It seems to me that we are really talking about two different
> problems:
>
> 1. Individual issues that parents would like ARPS to take action on.
> This could be a request for info, a request of a teacher, feedback,
> ideas, etc.  These tend to be personal and focused on a kid.  A
> traditional issue tracking system works well for this, but the
> important aspect is buy-in from ARPS to dedicate staff to using it.
> Traditionally this type of implementation is core to staff workflow,
> so it really needs to be built into their daily work routines.  I
> wonder if PowerSchool has such a system already?
>
> 2. The other area I see is an effective tool to enable the community
> to support each other.  A place to pose questions, post information,
> ask for help, give ideas, brainstorm strategy, give feedback.  An

> example of this is getsatisfaction.comhttp://www.getsatisfaction.com/why/#how