Everyday Run State: Pro Edition

We all (think we) love a good list. Service boards in ConnectWise or Autotask are essentially giant to-do lists: tickets, projects, escalations, reminders. And just like personal to-do lists, they can quickly get overwhelming.

For a technician, opening their board in the morning can feel like staring at a never-ending treadmill. Ten tickets assigned, more coming in by the hour, and no matter how hard they work, the list doesn’t shrink. For an owner, it looks like the team is always busy but SLAs still get missed, updates slip through the cracks, and customers don’t always get the communication they expect.

The problem isn’t that the team isn’t working hard. It’s the way work is being handed out.

Push vs. Pull on the Service Desk

In Lean manufacturing, there are two ways to move work: push and pull.

• In a push system, items are sent forward whether or not the next step is ready. On a service desk, this looks like dispatch or managers assigning ticket after ticket to a tech with no thought to their current workload. The result? Bottlenecks, missed updates, and overstuffed queues.

• In a pull system, work is only released when there’s capacity. Techs complete what’s on their plate, then pull in the next ticket. The result? Smoother flow, steadier updates, and SLAs that are much easier to hit.

Manufacturing teams discovered pull systems reduce waste and rework. Companies can get the same benefits by adjusting how tickets move through their boards.

From Factory Floor to Service Board

A service board full of half-touched tickets is the definition of a push system. Everyone looks busy, but not much is getting completed.

Instead, think about adopting a pull approach:

• Cap the active work. Limit how many tickets a technician can truly work on at once. Three is often plenty.

• Use a “ready” queue. Dispatch or triage can stage tickets here. Techs pull them in when they’re free, rather than being buried in assignments from the start.

• Prioritize by SLA. Organize the ready queue so that tickets with SLA deadlines naturally rise to the front of the line. That way, the pull system isn’t just about workload - it’s about service commitments too.

• Break down big tickets. If a ticket is more complex than expected, split it into smaller steps. Pull them one at a time to keep things moving.

• Track flow, not volume. Measure how quickly tickets move from open to resolved, rather than how many are sitting in queues.

Less Push, Better Flow

A push-based service board leaves technicians overloaded and customers waiting. A pull-based approach creates steadier throughput, more reliable updates, and a much better chance of consistently hitting SLAs.