Asking around: Which IT tasks get the messiest?

Things pile up in IT—whether it’s emails in the inbox, tickets at the help desk, or those 20 outdated Windows 10 laptops that are currently blocking the door to your office.

But it’s a new year, which means it’s a perfect time to get the most unwieldy IT jobs in order.

A selection of IT pros shared the tasks that lead to the most messes, build-ups, and disorganization, along with their recommendations on how to clean things up in 2026.

Security equipment

When it comes to physical security, follow-through is everything. Robert LaDouceur, COO of CSP Consultants Group, has seen security cameras deployed only to be left alone, to the point where even a recently planted tree might block the view…and nobody notices. “There’s really nobody that’s looking at the security system unless there is an incident,” he told us.

Advice: This applies not only to maintaining security hardware throughout a physical site (i.e., cameras, sensors, locked doors) but also security software, firmware and software patches, and pretty much anything else that discourages external or internal threats. Have an internal employee or professional integrator ensure regular inventory updates, patching, and testing of camera views and motion detectors, LaDouceur said.

Cables

Cables get left behind in the course of normal events, eventually causing chaos when an IT pro is trying to build out new infrastructure or simply fix something that’s gone haywire. For example, wireless access points and other smart technologies have cords running from the device—sometimes mounted in the ceiling—back to the server room, where they terminate at a hardware assembly connection point (known as a patch panel); from there, short patch cables connect the panel to network switches providing connectivity—many opportunities for things to become unmanageable and parts to disappear, in other words.

Advice: Label your cables, LaDouceur said. Even better, lay the lines out in a tidy manner the first time, and keep arrangements as close to their original states as possible while performing typical IT tasks.

Unstructured tickets

Allison Kinnaird, principal advisory director at Info-Tech Research Group, has seen many unstructured requests for technical assistance; those quick emails that lack context (subject line: “help me!!!!!”) and may end up lost and without an orderly queue and ticket format.

IT leads must define that structure for a “good” ticket, defining clear operating procedures, rules, and benchmarks, Kinnaird said. (A proper ticket, for example, should include a clear statement of the incident or request; the service impacted, urgency required, and timestamped updates, Kinnaird recommended.)

Advice: Make the big to-do list a lot smaller by “making yesterday’s ticket quality perfect,” Kinnaird told us. “You don’t have to resolve it or close yesterday’s tickets, but I want to make sure that all your tickets that you’re working on are in the right category. It’s the right priority.”

Patching

Michael Arrowsmith, chief trust officer at IT operations platform NinjaOne, sees patches piling up as IT pros figure out the balance between prioritizing updates and making sure everyone stays up and running. “If I roll a single patch that maybe introduces the inevitable blue screen of death with Windows, it is going to be detrimental to that group of business,” Arrowsmith told us. “And do I have the right resources to be able to recover from that type of event, especially in today’s day and age when so many employees are working from home?”

Advice: Acceptance. “Patching is never going to go away, so what are those tools and vehicles that we use to be able to perform this capability, and does that fit within the capabilities of it?” Arrowsmith told IT Brew.

Project management clutter

Philip Heijkoop, global practice lead for developer experience at tech consultancy Valiantys, has seen plenty of projects—such as internal workflow improvements based on employee or customer feedback—that don’t get updated or documented properly.

“You have to weed through a garden that’s overgrown effectively, and that’s, I think, where pile-up happens, because then information becomes really hard to sort out,” Heijkoop told IT Brew.

Advice: Assign fewer tasks and provide “slack” to implement new ideas, document, and share information. “It’s relatively simple. It’s just not always easy to do,” Heijkoop said.