Factors affecting the performance of system support engineers

Abstract

System Support Work is rapidly growing area in the IT industry for production systems. According to current statistics, several companies are spending one-third of the budget for their IT maintenance. It maintenance took support engineers to the IT industry. This makes the opportunity to growth of system support engineers within the IT industry, and still, it is a growing area among the IT sector. Considering experiences of support engineers, most of them facing several difficulties during career path changes, level of technical competency within other software engineers such as developers, Quality Assurance, etc. Moreover, there is a tendency to assign one engineer to a system for an extended period of support and maintenance. The research was conducted to identify factors negatively affecting to system support engineers with their long term tenure. Personal productivity is the most crucial factor in an organization’s productivity. Individual failure has a direct impact on project failure, and it will impact an organization negatively. Therefore, the importance of identifying these factors are helping to improve the productivity of the organization while motivating individual workers. There are two main factors called intrinsic and extrinsic factors impact on employee motivation or demotivation. Intrinsic factors are characteristics of engineers, and extrinsic factors management, company culture, etc. are the effect of the factors from externally. Less challenging work, less recognition comes under intrinsic factors and rewards, promotions are some of the extrinsic factors. As a final result of the survey, the researcher has identified that awards, monetary compensation, leadership, team collaboration, and new technologies are crucial extrinsic factors which are directly impact on system support engineer productivity. Recognition, challenging work, repetitive works is the main factors for system support engineers sensitive to their productivity.