"Empowering Ownership: A Paradigm Shift in Operation Team Management"

From my perspective, having observed numerous operation teams and being a part of various networking operation teams, whether dealing with voice, data, or transmission, I strongly believe that operation teams should take ownership of specific devices. This sense of ownership fosters a greater sense of responsibility. Currently, most operation teams work in shifts, with tickets assigned to individuals who strive to resolve them. This model effectively addresses many challenges such as managing personnel, shifts, and ensuring everyone gets an opportunity to work in different shifts, promoting rotation and prioritization of tickets. However, there is a significant challenge with this approach—no one is fully accountable for a particular region, set of customers, or even devices. Consequently, there is a lack of ownership, making it more challenging. Typically, agents are solely focused on resolving their tickets, moving on to the next one, and avoiding escalations and just complete their shift.

In this model, people are generally not motivated in making improvements, and it is usually passed on to leaders who often lack insight and the team usually disagrees with the suggestions and further gets demotivated. The team becomes more mechanical in its approach. However, consider a model where one engineer is assigned to oversee the operations of 10 countries in which the company operates. This engineer would be responsible for managing all the firewalls or even security devices across these 10 countries, assuming they possess expertise in firewall management. Let's assume they handle approximately 50 firewalls. As a backup, they have conducted knowledge sharing sessions with 2 to 3 individuals from different regions who can provide support when the primary engineer is unavailable. And also the primary engineer has made notes and kept in a shared repository. These individuals would only serve as backup support and would allow the primary engineer to review any changes made in their absence and standardize them later on.

This model instills a sense of ownership in the assigned engineer for the 10 locations they oversee. They can establish regular connections with their customers, gaining insights into their pain points. Since they are responsible for maintaining the firewalls in the long term during their tenure with the organization, they become invested in standardizing the firewalls. They are more likely to generate ideas and introduce best practices. Their increased connection with customers leads to a heightened sense of responsibility when their customers face difficulties. Additionally, they maintain regular communication with colleagues handling other aspects of the network infrastructure, allowing them to grasp the broader landscape as their experience grows. I understand that this model introduces certain challenges in some areas; however, I still believe it is worth exploring. Some IT departments may have limitations, for example, handling laptop troubleshooting becomes more difficult in this model. Nonetheless, each location could be assigned to an individual, allowing them to support other regions by assigning tickets in the ticketing system.