How to Stop the Dilbertization of IT?

Posted by Zonk on Saturday March 17, 2007 @08:30AM from the some-sort-of-anti-phb-spray dept.

Alien54 writes "In the simplest terms: too many IT workplaces have become Dilbertized -- micromanaged, bureaucratic and stifled creatively. It's become an environment where busy work is praised and morale is low. How is it possible to bring IT's appeal back? 'IT professionals that have worked in the field for a long time often speak about a shift in their work where they have gone from tossing ideas back and forth to make for better technology solutions to fighting fires all day. "There's less emphasis on creativity, and more on maintenance. Tweak this, work on this ... In being reactive not proactive, everything is a crisis. Something has to be done right now, putting out fire after fire, going a long way to making IT a less pleasant environment," said Skaistis. Beyond making for a unpleasant work environment for the techies already in-house, this firefighting serves as a warning to potential recruits: you will not like this job.'"

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Regression of IT by Anonymous Coward · 2007-03-17 08:44 · Score: -1, Flamebait

Stupidity in IT is the reason this shit happens. If you don't want shit to break, you fix it when you find (or create it you hack a minute folks) the issue not when it becomes a crisis. If you don't want fires to happen clear the brush from the trees.

Notification and alerts from monitoring systems are easy enough to use to catch the major fires as the smoke starts to raise, rather than when the flames are raging.

Good documentation and change control keep the hazards to a minimum, and make it easy to see (and rollback) a fuck-up.