Summary. Add a ticket property called "Effort" to Thread. It would estimate how hard a ticket is to resolve, similar to story points in Jira or Linear. PSAs don't offer this today. Problem. Managers judge techs mostly by tickets closed and smile-backs, and ticket count ignores difficulty. A tech who closes five hard tickets looks worse on the board than one who closes ten easy ones. Clay at Afinety manages a 12-person team. He says techs complain about this, and his year-end reviews come down largely to gut feel. What Clay asked for. An effort value on each ticket, even a subjective one, as "an added variable to look at." He compared it to sentiment scoring, which isn't perfect but is still a useful signal. He called it "a great idea" and said he'd be interested. Possible signals. Time spent on the ticket. Clay warned this alone is unreliable, because some techs document poorly and time open isn't time worked. How complex the issue is, including cross-platform dependencies and how many systems it touches. A point-style scale, possibly with Thread's AI estimating it from the ticket's contents. Where it could be used. Manager reporting and performance reviews, to weight tickets closed by difficulty. Dispatch load balancing, which today counts only active tickets. Effort would let it weight tickets differently. Open questions. Is effort set by hand, estimated by AI, or both? What scale should it use? How should it account for a tech's experience? Clay pointed out that effort depends on who works the ticket.
