Modeling Web Maintenance Centers through Queue Models

The Internet and WEB pervasiveness are changing the landscape of several different areas ranging from information gathering/managing and commerce to software development, maintenance and evolution. Traditionally, phone-centric services, such as ordering of goods, maintenance/repair intervention requests and bug/defect reporting, are moving towards WEB-centric solutions. This paper proposes the adoption of queue theory to support the design, staffing, management and assessment of WEB-centric service centers. Data from a mailing list archiving a mixture of corrective maintenance and information requests were used to mimic a service center. Queue theory was adopted to model the relation between the number of servants and the performance level. Empirical evidence revealed that by adding an express lane and a dispatcher service time variability is greatly reduced and more complex business rules may be implemented. Moreover, express lane customers experience a reduction of service time, even in the presence of a significant percentage of requests erroneously routed by the dispatcher.