A practical IT support and service management portfolio project based on a simulated small retail business in Sydney, Australia.
This project presents an end-to-end IT support improvement initiative for Harbour Home Furniture Pty Ltd, a fictional furniture retailer based in Sydney.
The project was developed to analyse a simulated retail IT environment, identify recurring technology incidents, evaluate IT support performance, perform Root Cause Analysis, and design practical improvements using IT service management principles.
The project combines technical support documentation, incident data analysis, Jira Service Management implementation, SLA management, knowledge management, and preventive IT support recommendations.
Harbour Home Furniture operates a retail showroom with approximately 15 employees.
The simulated IT environment includes:
- Point of Sale (POS) terminals
- EFTPOS machines
- Windows laptops and desktops
- Windows Server
- Microsoft 365
- Outlook and Microsoft Teams
- Inventory management system
- Network printers
- Barcode scanners
- Network switch
- Firewall/router
- Staff and Guest Wi-Fi
- Wireless access points
- NBN business internet connection
The organisation relies primarily on an external Managed Service Provider (MSP) for technical support.
The key objectives of the project were to:
- Document the current IT environment
- Develop an IT Asset Register
- Create a network architecture diagram
- Build a simulated IT incident register
- Analyse incident trends and support performance
- Identify recurring technical problems
- Perform Root Cause Analysis using the 5 Whys methodology
- Design and implement an IT service desk workflow in Jira Service Management
- Configure incident priorities and SLA targets
- Develop escalation procedures
- Create IT support knowledge-base documentation
- Configure service desk queues and reporting
- Build a Jira IT support dashboard
- Develop preventive IT support recommendations
- Create an implementation roadmap
A dataset of 50 simulated IT support incidents was developed and analysed.
Key findings included:
- Total incidents analysed: 50
- Average resolution time: 3.6 hours
- SLA compliance rate: 66%
- SLA breaches: 17
- First Contact Resolution rate: 34%
- Most common incident category: Network – 12 incidents
- Most frequently affected system: Staff Wi-Fi – 6 incidents
The findings identified opportunities to improve network reliability, incident prioritisation, SLA monitoring, escalation, troubleshooting consistency, and proactive infrastructure monitoring.
The 5 Whys methodology was applied to three key problem areas:
- Staff Wi-Fi instability
- POS and network connectivity issues
- SLA breaches
The analysis identified probable contributing factors including limited proactive monitoring, reactive management of critical infrastructure, and the absence of a structured centralised incident management process.
A practical Jira Service Management environment was configured for the project.
The implementation included:
- Incident ticket creation
- Incident prioritisation
- Ticket assignment
- Incident investigation
- Internal troubleshooting documentation
- Pending ticket management
- Incident resolution
- SLA tracking
- Custom queues
- Incident reporting
- Knowledge Base integration
- IT support dashboard
Sample incidents were created for:
- POS connectivity failure
- Staff Wi-Fi instability
- Outlook synchronisation issues
- Network printer outage
- Microsoft 365 account access
The practical workflow demonstrated multiple incident states including Open, Work in Progress, Pending, and Completed.
The following priority-based incident targets were configured:
| Priority | Classification | Response Target | Resolution Target |
|---|---|---|---|
| P1 | Critical | 15 minutes | 2 hours |
| P2 | High | 30 minutes | 4 hours |
| P3 | Medium | 1 hour | 4 hours |
| P4 | Low | 4 hours | 8 hours |
Five IT support knowledge-base articles were developed as project artefacts:
- KB001 – Troubleshooting Staff Wi-Fi Connectivity Issues
- KB002 – Resolving Microsoft 365 Password and Account Access Issues
- KB003 – Troubleshooting Network Printer Problems
- KB004 – Troubleshooting Outlook Synchronisation Issues
- KB005 – Initial Troubleshooting for POS Connectivity Problems
The Jira Service Management Knowledge Base integration was also configured as part of the practical implementation.
Key recommendations include:
- Centralise IT support requests through Jira
- Implement consistent incident prioritisation
- Monitor SLA performance
- Establish formal escalation procedures
- Maintain IT support knowledge documentation
- Conduct monthly incident reviews
- Implement proactive network monitoring
- Conduct wireless network assessments
- Perform regular POS health checks
- Establish preventive maintenance
- Strengthen IT asset management
- Introduce Problem Management
- Review MSP service performance
- Establish continuous service improvement
Sydney-Retail-IT-Support-Improvement/
- 01 Business Overview
- 02 Current IT Environment
- 03 Incident Register
- 04 Incident Analysis
- 05 Root Cause Analysis
- 06 Jira Workflow
- 07 SLA and Escalation
- 08 Knowledge Base
- 09 Preventive Recommendations
- 10 Final Report
- 11 Presentation
- Images
- README.md
This project demonstrates practical experience with:
- IT Support
- Service Desk Operations
- Incident Management
- Jira Service Management
- IT Service Management (ITSM)
- SLA Management
- Incident Prioritisation
- Escalation Procedures
- Root Cause Analysis
- 5 Whys Analysis
- Knowledge Management
- IT Asset Management
- Network Troubleshooting
- Microsoft 365 Support
- POS Support
- Data Analysis
- IT Documentation
- Service Reporting
- Preventive IT Support
- Continuous Service Improvement
- Jira Service Management
- Microsoft Excel
- Microsoft Word
- Microsoft PowerPoint
- Microsoft Visio / Diagramming Tools
The project includes:
- Business overview documentation
- IT environment documentation
- IT Asset Register
- Network architecture diagram
- 50-ticket simulated incident register
- Incident analysis dashboard
- Root Cause Analysis documentation
- Jira workflow design and practical implementation
- SLA and escalation framework
- IT support knowledge-base articles
- Preventive recommendations
- Implementation roadmap
- Final project report
- Management presentation
- Jira implementation screenshots
Harbour Home Furniture Pty Ltd is a fictional organisation created for this portfolio project.
The incident records, performance metrics, business environment, and operational scenarios used in this project are simulated for educational and professional portfolio purposes. They do not represent the systems or performance of a real organisation.
Rafiur Rahman Ayon
Bachelor of Information Technology Student
Sydney, Australia
Career Interests: IT Support | Service Desk | Help Desk | Retail Technology Support