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The Disconnect Between Management and the Value of IT
DavidHumus writes "According to a Wall St. Journal article top executives at most companies fail to recognize the value of IT, having a tendency to think of information technology as a basic utility, like plumbing or telephone service. The article lists five primary reasons for 'the wall' between IT and business: 'mind-set differences between management staff and IT staff, language differences, social influences, flaws in IT governance (defined as the specification and control of IT decision rights), and the difficulty of managing rapidly changing technology.' Does this fully explain the extreme lack of understanding of IT at high executive levels? The article is even-handed in apportioning blame but touches on a few good points. In particular, how '[m]ost top executives ... think of IT as an expensive headache that they'd rather not deal with.'"
I think this comment shows a failure to recognize the value of basic utilities.
-Dave
They missed something off the list. One of the biggest, if not the biggest barriers I see is the desperate attempts of managers to pretend they know more than their staff. This is never more apparent than in computers and the painful experiences I have had with managers who have to try and justify a higher salary whilst doing something which, at the end of the day, is less critical to the production of a product or service than the people who are actually developing it, have left me with nothing but pity for those managers. It's a terrible burden to have to try and instruct someone who knows a lot more about how to accomplish something than you do, and it tends to result in interference or denigration. Only a few non-technical managers I have had have had the confidence or humility to just ask me what the best thing they should decide is. And they were the best managers.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
The top execs are the true victims of the IT bubble and nonsense IT sales pitches they bought into that ended up just costing them and their company valuable time and resources. Add to that the possibility that they lost boatloads of personal capital on IT stocks, it should be enough to justify their phobia for the sector altogether.
To us IT folk, the nonsense might seem clear, but to those who are targeted and easily confused, treading waters softly is really a matter of safety, not ignorance.
Perhaps the reason some businesses "don't want the headache" is do to the attitude of some IT departments. In my dealings, some of them (READ SOME) have the attitude that they are doing you a favor, just talking to you.
Where I work, our Facilities department gets whatever it wants. They take care of the generators, the lights, the A/C, etc. All things this place needs to keep running. We IT people get shafted at every opportunity because we "cost money," yet we take care of the servers and applications that keep this place running. Turn our stuff off, and it's as detrimental to the business as turning off all the lights. I can only dream of what being treated like a utility would be like. It must be nice.
I don't know about you, but my servers run on the power of cotton candy and happy thoughts. -Anonymous Coward
No one (management or not) ever recognizes the value of IT until they don't have it.
The way I usually put it, at least to my company, is that a good IT department can MAKE the company money, rather than cost it money. A good IT department can increase productivity of said company's employees, provide support services to customers (through the web), provide exposure to potential customers (again through the web), and fix the boss's home computer when his daughter breaks it. (Har-Har)
The CEO was once an IT grunt back in the old days. So, yes the tech has changed but he still sees the world through the IT "filter" as it where. Many decisions he has to defend to the board and rest of management because they make sense from the business side for IT (such as hot swap backup equipment). The other managers see it as expense, luckily the CEO sees it our way (yes, it's a cost now, but downtime mean more cost later)
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
...is the same as the value of a toilet.
- it is necessary to the functioning of the business
- unless you are a toilet manufacturer or a landlord, it is NOT part of your central business
- ideally it "just works", allowing you to focus on more important things
- when it doesn't "just work", things start to stink.
The difference is that it is unthinkable that most companies should have a "Chief Plumbing Officer", but the IT world seems to think that they need to be involved at the highest reaches of every company's management.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
And how does IT view Management? Do they view them as nothing more than an employer? Somebody who writes payroll checks and should stay out of the way of IT? Does IT understand the value of business investments, legal contracts, general ledgers, due diligence, SEC problems, etc? I think in order for Management to care about IT, it is going to have to be a two-way street. IT and Management need to learn to work *together*, and that is going to require some understanding from IT as well.
Just because I can hook a shark from a boat, I do no offer to wrestle it in the water.
After all, we just take out the trash every day (figuratively, that is). Honestly, top management and executives could care less why the , they just want it fixed since it's hampering their business "productivity."
Maybe I'm bitter, but we are viewed as objects that do the dirty work.
You tell them, spend $10 mill and we will get you $50 mill in sales.
They say... nah, how about $3 mill and $10 million in sales.
And this is for a multi billion dollar corporation.
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They throw away software that has been fixed of all issues and buy packages recommended by salespeople that never works as promised for several years (at which point they throw it out and get new stuff... again!!!) I think that is because the tax laws incent new capital investments over maintaining/upgrading existing software.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
FWIW, I think one of the key outputs of IT Governance implementation is to stamp out this form of disconnect.
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
Typical call to IT here?
"Hi, I need to use X piece of software (which is mainstream and well-known). I can't install it myself because I don't have admin rights, can you install it please?"
"Why do you need it?"
"Well [insert many technical reasons here]"
"Sorry, we can't install software that hasn't been approved."
"How do I get it approved?"
"Well it will have to go before the board, which meets every 6 months or so. And you also have to [insert about 100 roadblocks and obstructionist measures here]."
"Great. Screw it, I'll just work from home again."
If you want to know why your IT department is hated, ask yourself how you treat your customers. Do you treat them as your bosses, or as your enemies?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The mindset at one place I've worked is that "we're not in the software development business, so we don't want to invest in good software development practices", even though the primary business depended, heart and soul, on very specialized and customized software tools. I can see this kind of thing from a secretarial staffing agency. I can't see this kind of thing from an industrial giant making any sense, but it's really a common attitude. They want to develop tomorrow's products using nothing but COTS tools. Newsflash: if all the tools come in predefined boxes, it's really really tough to think outside the box. Software is soft and malleable for a reason.
[
Price != value.
Basic utilities are immensely valuable. Imagine how much less productive your office would be if it didn't have phones, electricity, or indoor plumbing.
The fact that these items cost only a fraction of their contribution doesn't mean the same is true for IT.
The key difference is that most basic utilities are or have historically been regulated and their price set at the cost of production plus a reasonable profit. Where they are not regulated they are theoretically kept reasonable by market pressures or political pressures.
Employment of knowledge-workers on the other hand is different:
Each job is unique. Each worker is unique. Leaving one employer for another you hope will be better takes time and effort, as does "getting rid of" a less productive worker and replacing him with someone you hope will be more productive. For these reasons, if someone's pay, benefits, and working conditions are "close enough" to what both the employer and employee think are fair, the employee probably won't quit and he probably won't be "gotten rid of."
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Because if you're talking about sysadmin, managing files, network, backups, net access, etc... I don't really see the difference with a basic utility. It should "just work" it requires money and work to maintain, it is possible for users to do stupid things. It is possible for managers to ask impossible things or to impose an impractical solution.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
... the bean counters and excs, IT is a cost center that does not help you sell more widgets. This puts IT in a bad light. I used to work in the environmental field (80's and 90's) and I saw this kind of response all the time. Why should I spend money on running a clean business when I have been doing it my old way for so long. It becomes a big thorn in their foot.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to think "profiling is worse than the slaughter of innocent people..."
Back in the early 90s when I was a real newbie, I asked an ISP if I needed a special phone line for a SLIP connection. Instead of just saying "No" and being done with it, the guy just kept asking "Why". I was not very technical back then and the internet was extremely new (to the general public) so I wasn't coming up with very good reasons. But still, he kept asking "Why" like some retarded parrot.
Moral of the story is I developed a patient, not condescending, attitude to non-tech people when explaining things.
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
The sales department makes money, while the IT department costs money.
The problem? IT people don't typically understand good business practices, how to make money, and The Big Picture. Management doesn't typically understand the overall usefulness of IT and how it isn't the plumbing and lights - they just know it isn't management or sales. When management and IT REALLY don't get along, there's a serious productivity disconnect that affects everyone.
IT people often forget hey are a support, not line function.
On the third hand, IT departments are often not staffed adequately, either in butts in chair or in the quality of the heads over those butts. It seems absurd to think about using IT to achieve breakthroughs in productivity or competitiveness when they seem to spend more time restricting the work that goes through the department than actually getting things done.
The bottom line is that skill is distributed on a normal curve, and the vast majority of people are mediocre. That includes top management; most companies have mediocre leadership. When the leadership of a company is weak, there's not much IT can do to make things better. They really are just a facilities type function.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
That is auditors or security departments fault.
IT only allows what other people them is allowed. And normally the people saying the last word are auditors of some kind or another.
But is it really a fault?
You see it as obstructionist, but do you have the legal know how to know if the application you want installed is legitimate? Are you going to vouch for its security? (I have seen badly programmed applications, including FOSS ones, bring down complete networks due toe unintended denial of service attacks. Will you take responsibility it the tool you need does such thing?). WIll you put your hands in fire for your application in regards to viruses, trojans and any other nasties?
The obstructionist attitude has a purpose which is to protect the assets and reputation of your company. If that pisses you off, though.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
I knew one like that. He got fired for not knowing some tech buzz word that I can't even remember myself. Many of those guys are defensive for a reason: maybe because of their own irrational insecurities or maybe they've learned the hard way not to look "stupid".
Let's face it, if you don't know something, many, if not most, IT folks will be quick to criticize and pounce on the "stupid" person and give the poor bastard a bad rep that is almost to get rid of. I once worked somewhere on someone's code that I thought was designed quite well: it was tight, commented impeccably, excellent memory management (in 'C'), and it work as designed. I was told that the original coder has a horrible reputation as being "stupid". I just shook my head and said that I wish I were that "stupid". He was no longer with the company. He quit and got a better job - good for him!
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
A significant portion of the impressive productivity gains in the American workforce over the past two decades has come from technology (mainly IT) advances and getting those implemented in the workplaces.
I think they ignore that at their peril.
If you didn't come to party don't bother knocking on my door. Prince '1999'
I don't think "I.T." is being discriminated against in most companies
the larger issue is how does management treat employees in general. "I.T." is going to be treated pretty close to everybody else.
for example: the "bully boss" is still common in 2008. I have yet to come across a "management" book that recommends to "intimidate your employees, refuse to listen to reality, pay them as little as possible, criticize what you don't understand" - but I keep running into various forms of that management philosophy (the accepted explanation for why people/management get away with acting like assholes is because it "works" to a certain degree)
the second big issue is that technology in general has a "life cycle."
Once upon a time, if you owned an automobile (lets say 100 years ago) you probably built it yourself (or at least knew the person who built it for you), and were most likely able to perform "mechanic" functions yourself (there might have been a livery stable in every town, but no gas stations with "mechanics"). as more people acquired automobiles, "mechanic" probably became a very respected profession. Today "mechanic" may still be a respected profession, but ...
information technology has followed a similar cycle. 20 years ago, "fixing" computers was more of a challenge than it is today. If you owned a personal computer 20 years ago, you probably knew how to open the case and "fix" it, and for that matter you probably wrote some of the software you used (oh, and I had to walk up hill, in 20 feet of snow, both ways to school, in the summer!).
computers have gotten smaller, faster, and more dependable. Add in the facts that the number of people with "computer skills" has also grown, that personal computers are pretty close to "commodity" status, and supply and demand rears its head
yes, in general, management may not fully appreciate the impact I.T. can have on the profitability of an organization - but this is simply an indication of poor management (with that said, I'd love to work for Apple/Cisco/Google ...lol)
It ain't what they call you. It's what you answer to. http://mylyceum.us/
does not guarantee that your business will be successful, but having the wrong Information Technology guarantees that your business will fail.
Executives that fail to see that truth, will not have long careers.
-ted
There's no magic in IT. You identify what you need and then implement it. If it doesnt give a significant gain in productivity its not worth dealing with.
Most CIO's and techies tends to look at a new system and then start figuring out where it fits the organization. Thats completely screwed up and is the biggest reason why so many projects fail. The way it should work is that the people needing a function identify it and then the techies find a way to solve it as good/cheap as possible.
IT is just a utility like everything else, there is no gain in overspending whatsoever. You dont buy 10 ferraris when you need one truck do you?
HTTP/1.1 400
Depreciation. Back a few years ago when i was doing this kind of thing, you could depreciate the cost of software/hardware/etc (over a period of 3 years iirc) and take that out of your income so you were paying taxes on a lower income.
That's a bad attitude, but it develops as a defense to crappy user attitudes. "You NEED to fix this!" is the cry of the user who did something stupid/inappropriate and broke his computer.
Employees also tend to blame IT when they got caught browsing porn or running their home business at work.
User: "My computer is broken."
IT: "What's wrong?"
User: "I can't access Myspace"
IT: "That's because we block it."
User: "You suck!"
Bigtime Consulting - "We're the best because we cost the most"
At our company I will repeatedly tell other department heads when we complete a project or as a casual reminder what the man hour savings are.
One of my projects was to automate a certificate system that reduced the average time to process and generate an education certificate. The average time to process a certificate went from 10-15 minutes per to 1 minute per. This saves hundreds of man hours, and subsequently thousands of dollars in labor in that department.
Another of a projects we maintain is the e-commerce system. Without it, we would have double to triple our Customer Service staff to process calls. This saves labor, floor space and support space.
You need to do this kind of reminding -regularly.- Another I have heard/followed is "Always eat lunch with someone above you." This advice is self serving for career, promotions, but in hard times - to remind the value of yourself and what you do.
If you hide in your cube all day coding/sysadmin/DBA jockeyin without the social selling, it doesn't always pay.
IT is not the only department that is misunderstood. For example, Ray Kassar of Atari thought that software programmers were a cost center too, and no different than assembly plant workers. He didn't realize that programmers were vital to how Atari makes money, and thus the best programmers all left Atari and went to start Activision with a business plant o make 3rd party software for Atari.
So, we're talking about guys who
-jumped on the latest bandwagon without thinking about the actual usefulness of IT for their business
-or maybe were just afraid to look obsolete
-and wasted some of their own money buying the latest crap stock because it had ".com" in its name
Yeah right. Exactly the kind of guy who should NOT lead a company. Or at least only a company held privately, with himself as the only investor
C - the footgun of programming languages
Basically the IT management is a personal cash cow for so many people in the corporate hierarchy. India gets blamed for the giant sucking sound and out sourced jobs. But they get a pittance. And the shareholders in America get some peanuts. And the corporate boards, who own very small percentage of the stock anyway, form you-scratch-my-back-and-I-scratch-your-back arrangements with the top executives.
I know people who are in the middle of the chain skimming something like 5 or 10 $ per hour per employee for providing some six or eight consultants from cognizant to a large publicly traded company in USA. Their only job is provide a shell and a cover to firms higher in the chain. They know and they told me the total mark up for the Indians consultants run the range between 200% to 500%. India used to be so cheap that the companies saved some money despite all the skimming by the middle men. But with rupee appreciating and Indian salaries inflating, if the same rate of skimming continues, shareholders don't save any money any longer through outsourcing. But the vested interests who are doing the padding and skimming are not going to let go that easily.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Zonk posts something relevant and interesting, that's not a blatant shill for some corporation or corporate pet cause. Way to go Zonk! Keep 'em coming.
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Not to be confused with Col.
Most reputable companies don't use thier plumbing to move around large volumes of sensitive/urgent/otherwise critical data. Poor plumbing is an inconvenience - poor IT can break a business.
It's like superheroing in reverse - with great responsiility we want great(er) power (Does that make IT supervillians?)
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
When it comes to IT their are THREE parties involved. Those who build it (IT), those who govern it (Management) and those who use it (Employees).
These three groups often have no idea what the other is actually doing.
Have you ever seen one of those programs where the boss of a big company is put to work on the factory floor? They used to be pretty common, was there ever a SINGLE boss, who wasn't shown to be totally clueless about how the actual work was being done?
You think IT is any better? How many people with the best training in IT skills ever bother to go down to the factory floor and SEE the REAL workflow before they implement a system?
You got management trying to make decisions on how to improve a workprocess they don't understand, you got IT trying to implement something that has no basis in reality and employees forced to choose between actually getting the work done and following procedure.
It doesn't suprise me at all that this article doesn't mention the workforce. Management article talking about proper management but ignoring the people who got to do the actuall work, yeah, never seen that before.
Get your hands dirty before you even bother trying to think of implementing IT, FIND out what is REALLY needed. IT can do wonderfull things to be sure, but it needs to fit with what is really going on in your company, not what some manager thinks should be going on.
Make sure your management decisions can be executed, first observe what REALLY goes on, plan your changes, then TRY THEM YOURSELVE, with FULL pressure. If you can't do it, your employees can't do it and what counts isbeing able to do it on the busiest day of the year.
The most perfect example, testing an application with just 3 records in the database for performance. My job was to convert the old data, if I pushed more then ten records in, performance crumbled. Took me MONTHS to confince them that the problem was in the application, not my conversion (for every insert MILLIONS of reads were being done thanks to the most idiotic database design in history (no keys), compounded by some really really bad code). But they TESTED IT and it worked fine. Yah, 3 records and those not even fully fleshed out.
I could rant on for hours about bone-headed mistakes of all kinds, but basically FORCE management to get a clue and the only way to do that is BACK TO THE WORKFLOOR!
99% of IT projects that end up unused or not meeting requirements can simply be explained because they were designed without knowing what the real situation is.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The problem isn't management not seeing the benefit of IT, it is the lack of management skills within IT leadership and the typical geek mentality which is counter productive to traditional business.
I'm not saying that either one is better or doesn't have a place but workers in IT & particularly IT leadership need to start thinking that those business management classes in college are a good idea to at least take & listen in on. You're not going to convince the ones with deep pockets (upper management) to keep you around if you don't show your value up front to them. Sure, their practices may be antiquated but they are time-tested and in their eyes, work.
Geeks are also going to need to realize that not all things are academic, business leaders expect results, not some elegant solution that looks cool in an IDE. There's that classic line from Ghostbusters I remember, "I've worked in the private sector. They expect results. You've never been out of college. You don't know what it's like out there."
Maybe it's not that extreme but that is the truth, like it or not.
One good friend of mine who works as a network admin for an unnamed estate agent had this problem. Once upon a time he had 3 people working for him, maintaining the impressive stack of servers and clients connected to them. Slowly but surely, management became increasingly stingy and one by one his minions had to be relieved, as the IT budget dried up. Eventually he even had to sell off some of the servers just to make sure he had enough money to pay himself (oh yes, IT really were disconnected from management in an impressive fashion). After running the network on it's barebones configuration for several months, not receiving pay during that time, and after lodging several complaints I suggested that come the next power blip (a common occurrence in the south of Spain), he just doesn't turn the servers back on again.
One such blip happened hours before a crucial sales meeting and Bob was at home. They called screaming he get the network operational, and said he would except he hadn't been paid in months and couldn't afford the petrol in the car (a slight lie, due to excess server sales). Anyway, needless to say he got his cut in the end plus some extras.
Management often hate IT until they're groping around in the dark begging for them. Sometimes it can be healthy to 'demonstrate' why IT are important to management I think.
throw new NoSignatureException();
This is a part of capitalism I'm afraid. Power in any business goes towards those with charm, acumen and ruthlessness rather than any particular technical ability, so a clique of borderline sociopaths with decent accounting skills and winning smiles rises to the top of management, and has an unsurprising disdain for those people tinkering away competently but without the ability to use others as rungs on the ladder.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
How many IT managers make it to the board of manufacturing companies (or any other industry except IT Boards). Boards typically comprise operational guys, ex marketing/sales guys and a bean-counter. Not many sys-admins get that high up the chain, so they get overlooked at board level.
I'll see your hokum and raise you a boondoggle.
Funny that this comes after yesterday's IT Labor Shortage is Just a Myth.
I can sum it down into language even managers understand, "IT make money go bye-bye." While other departments are seen as money generators for the company, IT is thought of as a cost.
They often don't see the cost/benefit ratio or how IT HELPS them make money, they see it as an expense and a drain on the bottom line. And especially they don't understand that you will have to upgrade the technology from time to time. And when it is upgraded, it becomes a major expense and overhaul because it's been such a long time since the last one.
I would love to see a "day without IT." Turn off all the computer systems, phones, anything related to the IT department and let them see how much business gets done.
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
If you look at some application domains (and my example is the world of electric power), executives -- or even domain technical experts -- talk about doing things from a domain perspective. They often don't mention -- or seem to think about the fact -- that many of the things they are talking about are actually being implemented in information technology.
For example, very few of the reliability standards talk about the communications and computation that implement what the standard addresses. You have activities that can only be accomplished by remote control (implying data communications) but the only mention of communications in the standards is related to voice telephone procedures.
This can turn into a very serious blind spot. In electric power there is not only a wall between executives and IT, but another wall between IT and real-time operational control. I wouldn't be surprised to find the same thing in manufacturing companies.
At a meeting in a context unrelated to this discussion, someone pointed out that people who are good at math and science don't run for political office, and that perhaps their weakness at math and science is what got them into a field where running for political office is something people do. The same may apply to management. Some people go into management because they aren't good at technical work. Then the management culture gets ahold of them and they become uncomfortable with IT and IT people.
It is about time that computers and technology became core parts of a general education.
I've seen shitty and arrogant IT departments, I've seen friendly ones.
The people who say IT is mostly support, they have it exactly right. IT is a support function unless the business's main product is IT. Stupid management always devalues the workers, the people who keep the place running. In this regard, IT is not special. Sometimes IT is staffed by arrogant asses who deserve to be mocked, just like you can have rude janitors or marketing weenies. Again, nothing new here.
In a healthy organization, IT's attitude is "How do we make things better?" I'm always the Excel go-to guy since most people don't have the time to learn all the tricks. I'm fine with that. I've got a thousand tricks and most people only need to know a few of them. I set their sheet up the way they need it, they'll learn just the tricks they need and will be happy.
IT is always lacking for resources? Most departments are. My dad worked as a mechanic for the phone company motor pool and he was constantly complaining about how they had to make bricks without straw. Management saw them as nothing more than a cost center, never appreciating the value they provided. They increased the average age of the fleet from 10 to 20 years. Oh, that's great. Yes, you're cutting down on procurement costs but did you notice how maintenance is skyrocketing? No, that chart wasn't in the meeting. That's great.
Good IT makes itself available to the business, makes things run more efficiently and is invaluable. Ask the workers or management what would happen if the IT staff all got hit by a bus. If the response is "Oh my God, we'd be so fucked," that's a good IT department. If they just get this wistful little smile on their faces, that's a bad IT department.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
All these things are installed once, and when you have a problem, you get an electrician or a plumber. This is called outsourcing.
IT the infrastructure is about cabling, PC's and delivered software. No reason why you would not or could not outsource this either. However, from a certain company size you might need someone who is able to design and plan your IT infrastructure and hand this out to a contractor for implementation and maintenance.
Someone should come up with figures how basic IT improves productivity, e.g. how does the introduction of word processing enhance productivity ? Spreadsheet ? e-mail and other communication software ? If a company has these tools, how much would it cost them if they where completely removed, or how much less work would they be able to do if these where missing ?
A level higher is the introduction of a programmer in the company. A good programmer can add to or multiply the above productivity improvements. Again, you should ask the question : what would it cost me in time and personnel to perform the same amount of work, or how much work would we have only done with only this number of personnel ?
My experience up 'till now leads me to think that the single most important piece of software to make the most of a programmer, to enter ideas and follow up projects, to instill an ongoing process of improvement by software through the company, is the installation of bug/problem/idea tracking software. I personally find trac ideal for such a situation, because it is easy and fast to set up and use. If people have ideas, questions or problems, they should be able to enter them without much problems, difficulty or loss of time. This also makes it much easier to classify what is solved, i.e. does the programmer need to do much bug fixes, and of which kind, or can he concentrate on problem solving ? What is the turnaround time between entry and deployment, etc...
All of those companies outsource to a huge degree. Clearly "IT" has little value in and of itself. What does have value is a subset of their critical applications infrastructure. But the other 90% falls squarely in the laps of people like me who send the work to India, South America, China to do it for 1/10th the cost. If that work had any inherent strategic value they wouldn't outsource.
A global Content Delivery Network (not Akamai, their execs are far more intelligent) with some 20 massive Content Access Points around the world. It was run by hotel and insurance tycoons. Still is.
... And still have an engineering team ...
It came up in a meeting one time that the CFO wanted to get the software to a stable state, then eliminate the engineering department, since it was an "unjustifiable expense".
The chairman of the VC company that owns said CDN thought this was a good idea.
Needless to say, this horrified everyone with a clue, and resulted in about 60 resumes pro-actively hitting the market.
Believe it or not, they're still limping along, 3 years later
You're not that important. I don't mean that in a nasty way, but in a pragmatic one. There are hundreds of moving parts in a successful business, and any one of them can bring the company to a standstill - IT is just one of them. Can IT help the bottom line? Of course, but so can accounting, reception, marketing, interior decorating, etc. I run a small business, and I do the IT. I'm not very good at it, but I'm passable, and the minor issues we have had are covered. While it may be true that a catastrophic failure would likely cost me tens of thousands of dollars, I can't pay that kind of money to keep IT on retainer - you see, in a business the potential loss does not equate to the ability to pay to prevent a low-probability occurance.
I am one of those owners that actually bought and display a Despair poster, and I think it's appropriate to consider: http://despair.com/worth.html
I posted it because I'm in a service industry and it applies to me, too. We are, at times, a necessary evil to our customers. We can also save our clients a large amount of money - sometimes. IT isn't "like" plumbing, or phones, or janitor service, or accounting...but it is just one part of many - essential, but not the prime focus.
The expense involved in getting IR right (and, to be honest, getting it done even poorly) is negatively perceived because it is necessary to the functioning of a modern business, but doesn't seem to provide any advantage in the marketplace. If you don't have it, it is clearly a disadvantage, but getting the best doesn't translate (proportionally) financially. The becoming-old saw of "if computers have made us so much more efficient, why are we still working more than 40 hours a week to get work done" applies here. IT is part of the ever accelerating treadmill of efficiency, and - honestly - it is hard to justify passing on all the costs.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
One of the main problems is also a lack of alignment between the business and IT, and perception. Often the business will want X and IT will do Y. Not because IT wants to, but because IT does not understand the business well enough. The same is true about the business. I've known of IT Managers that want a system with enough Capacity, Availability and Redundancy to fly two Shuttle Missions. But the don't really understand what they're asking for. They think stuff in IT is endless, does not break, and it's always Available.
That's why process frameworks such as ITIL and CoBIT work. I know that ITIL is a four letter word for people on both sides of the equation. But it sets expectations, a common process language and structure, and provides accountability to all.
the future is but past forgotten
It's like the Fire Dept. saying that the mechanics working on their trucks are not important.
Crisis is the rule, not the exception.
Upper management should be disallowed from having vendors talk to them unsupervised. The real value in IT is solving business problems. Many times what happens is upper management has been sold a solution by a vendor that doesn't really solve any particular problem, and then we are forced to implement it. In pretty much every case, when this happened to me, I could have led projects to do it cheaper, faster, AND better. I swear, the manager at my last company had stock in Cisco, and the Director (of course) in Microsoft.
If management had instead gone to IT and said "This is what we need to do" then the real value of IT comes to light as we can work on a solution to that problem, or maybe even give some insight into "Well, with technology, that problem is actually this..let's solve that".
I used to work for an IT consulting company, and for most of our clients, the key was sitting down with them at yearly meetings and having planning meetings and discussions with senior management. We too are victim to executives that want to cut every corner, but since our name is ultimately attached to the level of service being provided, we have to make sure it's done right. We sit down and have basic SLA discussions, and we ask the senior management exactly what they want their technology to provide and in what manner. We tell them, 'If you want your internet and email to be like the power coming out of the wall, simply 'working all the time', this is what it's going to take to get you there...'.
People here have said much about what management thinks of IT, and what IT thinks of management, but I know in so, so many companies there's never really any high-level sit-downs with the IT manager and senior systems admin and senior management. Before you get stingy on budgets, you have to at least establish a few basic covenants of what the IT strategy is and what you want your IT infrastructure to look like and perform like. With that, 'nines come with a price tag'. Personally, I think this is the responsbility of the IT manager, not necessarily senior management. If the IT manager is running the shop without these levels of understanding, I would first look to them.
To management, I always liken it to purchasing a basic service for your home, like cable TV. You don't go out and pay a random amount of money for a service which you have no idea as to how many channels you getting and which channels they are. Our society and culture simply can't run that blindly. From the onset, the cable company has fairly straight forward information as to what levels of TV service they're offering, and for what price. With that, there's a basic understanding that the service will be reasonably available with decent quality for most of the time (gripes about Cable companies and Telco's aside). There's a basic understanding of what you're paying for and what you're getting - essentially, an implied SLA. The problem is in IT in business, both sides tend to have a completely opposite picture of what is implied. IT thinks they're going to get a reasonable budget for whatever they need, whilst management might think that can give IT a minimal budget and in return they provide systems with zero downtime.
You really need to sit down and discuss the basic facets from the onset. With that, the IT department has a responsibility to have a good idea as to what budgets they need and what is needed to privde certain levels of service. That's part of proper IT and business management.
Posting AC, but someone will probably figure out who I am anyway... if it doesn't work, I don't care.
I was hired by a Fortune 100 company to do desktop support, from my stint there as a temp. When I got there, the IT department was generally viewed by the user base as a joke, and a waste of time; if you DID manage to get through to the India-based help desk (affectionately known as the Helpless Desk), you would still wait up to a MONTH to get someone to visit your cube, or remote in to your system; oh, and forget trying to call someone onsite - no one ever answered their phones, anyway - all calls were screened, and generally ignored.
I was placed into a support role, and saw an opportunity to make a name for myself, which I quickly did. I changed the wait time on trouble tickets from 3+ weeks to well under 48 hours, answered every e-mail the same day, and, most importantly, answered every call.
This helped the department shed the previous negative image, and I quickly garnered a reputation as THE public face of IT here in the building. I had dozens of calls, e-mails, cards, and other notes of thanks and gratitude from the user base, from all areas of the company, and was totally happy with where I was. I truly loved my job, because of who I was serving. The people here are absolutely fantastic.
Then the worst happened - our headquarters was to be restructured. There would be about an 80% cut in personnel in the building, but I knew that most of them would still need support, so I thought my position was safe. That is, until this Friday, when I learned that my team of 7 would be slashed by 2, and I was one of them. So far, the only way I can see this decision being made in the way it was would be with voodoo and chicken entrails, or perhaps faulty divining rods. What's even more interesting is that I actually loved where I worked, and I'm gone, but at least 2 of the ones that survived the cut are wanting to get the hell out.
Incidentally, no management positions were eliminated in the IT infrastructure, in this series of terminations. Gee, what a shock.
All I have to say to the brainiacs that cut me is this; you will NEVER find anyone as committed and dedicated to their job, as I was to you - perfect attendance, zero tardiness, and my list of satisfied clients is the entire damn building; and this is the thanks I get... WOW. Just wow.
Security is not an excuse to do nothing. A good IT department must strike a balance between security and practical usefulness. If they are incapable of doing that, it is their incompetence that is to blame. After all, any idiot can "secure" a system by refusing to install any software on it. Someone who knows what the Hell they're doing knows what software to install and what not to install.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Did you read the article? The entire point is that, done well, IT has considerably more value than a toilet / plumbing / utilities... it doesn't "just work" and stay out of the way -- rather it produces substantial competitive and other business benefits. The best thing a toilet can do is not screw up, while great IT can make a huge difference in a business.
What's Amazon? It's the Sears catalog business, but with great IT. FedEx came out of nowhere to challenge UPS in the 80's and one of the reasons was package tracking (an IT investment). Citibank's big break came when it deployed (then proprietary) ATMs in NYC and quickly doubled their business. The list goes on...
I could say the same exact thing for Finance, HR, Payroll, Facilities, Legal... etc. They're all just as important as IT.
Basically, bad management will be bad, and good management will be good.
The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power. -- Daniel Webster
I consider myself most successful when no one thinks of the underlying technical infrastructure and they can just do what they do. It is when new tech is rolled out for no compelling reason that users and management think of IT as a pain in the ass.
In my last position the corporate IT dept. was always working on the next great enhancement, without considering the effects of the LAST great enhancement. The board would hire a CIO, he would make promises, rollout a big project, and get canned. We had six in a period of 12 years. They were always a friend of an executive, who knew nothing about our business. In my little office I mostly ignored them and ran what we needed.
The biggest shortcoming in IT people is business knowledge. If you don't understand what our company is doing and what makes it effective, then you can't implement truly beneficial enhancements. I am finding now that IT depts. are very insular, and rule out anyone who might bring such a business oriented mindset to the job.
I remember hearing of a director asking whether the current IT setup was really neccessary considering nothing ever went wrong...
http://www.frenchgeek.com/
of "Funny" responses.
Time to add a "Bitter" mod?
So true... As a software developer, I am never content with giving what is asked for in the specification. I always try to understand the "why". Only then, I start being able to add real value. The type of value that saves time, money and effort. I believe that what is needed is more people that area able to "cross-over" into a business mindset, while maintaining focus on technology. In a sense, more mature IT people are required. People who not only understand technology and business, but the purpose of technology in business.
I've been a software developer for over 30 years. Back in the day, the usual IT department even in a large comapny was one or two guys who knew about setting up unix networks.
Then Microsoft became popular as a desktop environment. The low quality of their entire product range combined with very poor documentation caused in most companies one or two people (usually developers who had played with windows in their spare time) to emerge as the unofficial domain experts on solving microsoft-specific issues.
Microsoft very quickly realised this and enocuraged this model as it mitigated the need for them to provide support for their own products. That combined with the fact that Microsoft jumped on the 'professional certification' bandwagon led to them creating hundreds of new IT job titles and certifications for them that until then no-one had ever even heard of before, let alone actually needed. Fast forqward a few years and now most IT-driven companies are working under the illusion that there needs to be masses of IT staff usally with different Microsoft certifications to support a simple computer network, which has become a self-fulfilling prophecy beacuse the office network in most places has been made unnecessarily complex by the same Microsoft-trained IT staff, apparently partly as job-preservation and partly to get around the technical shortcomings of Microsoft operating systems and products. now many IT departments have transitioned to an incorrect yet frequently-encounterd mentality that they now believe that their role is to be gatekeepers rather than just to provide a service to the people in comapnies that actually make the companies product or service.
My point is, that given the above, I think that if anything, management generally massively overvalue IT departments.
I've seen in most companies that the IT dept get larger budgets than entire production departments, IT employees usually get top-end PC's with widescreen monitors etc. to answer their emails on while developers and engineers, the guys actually making the product, are struggling to compile code bases on hand-me-down hardware.
In my eyes the fundamental problem is the lack of ambition of many IT managers and IT departments. This isn't the same as nerdiness, but it is a consequence of it. It does not occur to most IT managers that they should strive to make the company better -- more efficient, more profitable. It does not occur to them that they should try to change and improve the way in which people work. As a matter of fact, I've heard IT managers blithely and explicitly state that they don't want to contribute to better business processes; they just want to regard the business processes as a given, write a full set of specifications around it, and write some software to support it.
If Apple had been governed by this spirit, they would have produced a handy mini-computer to help people manage their gramophone records, not the iPod. If Amazon had had this mindset, their website would be accessible only from bookshops. Some people have vision, and others do not. If knowledge is power, then information could be money, but some people don't recognize money even if they step on it every day.
Instead, such IT managers tend to focus on making a computer run better. Perhaps a new printer server, and a safer anti-virus scanner. Replace all telephones by a new type, which nobody understands. Rewrite all the old COBOL software in .NET, but keep the same screen layout, to avoid confusing the users. Demand that no software installations are done, however small, if someone in Brazil did not write an automated installation script. Deliver all new PCs with Windows Vista, regardless of which applications people want to run on them. Usually all the good IT people walk away from such tedious and surreal jobs, but worse, the business leaderships walks away from it as well. If it's plumbing and routine maintenance, they don't want to think about it; and why should they? And why spend money on something which doesn't promise any real improvement to the bottom line?
As I wrote, nerdiness plays a role in this. Too many IT people just don't seem to have a serious interest in what happens outside their own department; they just want to do hardware or software. They don't understand business, they don't understand other forms of engineering, and they don't understand R&D -- and they don't want to! For business users, these are horrible people to deal with. I have gone as far as recommending that we shouldn't hire more professional IT people for the IT department, but engineers and scientists and economists with an interest in IT. That is, no doubt, unfair; there are IT professionals with wider ambitions and skill sets. Unfortunately, the average IT department doesn't see, to be able to hire or retain them.
The final tailspin usually comes when this curious, stoical detachment from the core business is formalized. The IT people think it over and say, we don't talk to the people in the business groups anyway, so why not all sit together and enjoy our own company, in one big IT department? And why not outsource all the support functions to the Comores? If you don't have any meaningful contact anyway, then distance indeed doesn't matter.
But in reality, that isn't a sustainable model. Some people in the business department still need some innovative, creative IT work done, and because the IT department doesn't seem interested in or capable of solving the problem (and at this moment the IT department often seems as mythical as the Kraken), they will do the work themselves. Getting together a few gifted amateurs, and start over from scratch as if the IT department never existed (while cursing it at the same time, of course). Then a manager will have the bright idea of formalizing this into a new IT group, and so the wheel turns round again...
Ask me about my sig!
This is slashdot and all; but this is basically just an IT circle jerk where we talk about how unvalued we are and how nothing could happen without us.
/Truth
'Value' is determined by the market. If companies that 'valued' IT were making buckets more money than companies that don't; then you'd see a trend where all companies want IT.
The simple fact of the matter is, as much as it might hurt us geeks (I am, after all, IT myself); unless you are at a Software Company whose job it is to product software or something along those lines; IT is just a secondary consideration.
I used to work at Allstate.
Allstate sells insurance.
To sell insurance well, Allstate may very well need things like Electricity, plumbing, and IT. But IT has nothing to do with it's core business. Long before computers were commonplace, Allstate's business model existed, and Allstate made money.
IT doesn't 'bring in money'. At best, you could say that IT let's customers more easily pay or enroll for a service; but, all of the competators do it too; so it's just a big wash. Allstate's IT is no different than it's cleaning staff - it is a cost of doing business.
And to every Exec (with the possible exception of a CTO), one IT guy is as good as any other IT guy. As long as the servers are running nobody cares.
Value to a company is inversely proportional to your value to management. Golf is hard and ass kissing is nasty. That's why they make the big money.
Quite a bit of what TFA says rings true. But "the wall" of which they speak is often built and maintained by the IT department in my experience.
IT initiatives to standardize processes, utilize COTS products and engage in massive re-engineering projects are often undertaken in spite of their effects on operating divisions. Process standardization usually means IT processes, not those of the customer organizations. Likewise, tools and platforms are selected to make the IT department's job easier. Its up to the customer to modify their processes in order to conform to the IT-mandated architecture. And attempts to implement smaller, pilot projects, re-engineer from the bottom up, use a flexible, distributed architecture to accommodate differences between departments operating needs has run into IT opposition to the "one big database managing everything" view of the world.
Back in the old mainframe days, it was the people in white lab coats in mysterious rooms filled with strange equipment that was too complex for mere mortals to comprehend, so don't bother asking. Once mini computers and then PCs became available to individual departments, the IT folks were temporarily exposed as 'mere mortals' figured out how this stuff actually worked. IT pushed back. The dot-com boom, together with buzzwords like 'enterprise solutions' provided by systems vendors scared management into putting IT management up on a pedestal, where they could command grand projects sweeping across the organization. Never mind that they didn't do too much for the companies core business of building widgets.
Have gnu, will travel.
In a long winded post about IT and management.
In business school, they teach the PHB's if you're not management and you're not productive, you're not worth much.
managers understand they don't produce anything. They also understand that IT doesn't produce anything.
The disconnect comes in where management refuses to treat IT staff as equals or colleagues or contemporaries.
Management is somewhat elitist in this regard. IT staff manage equipment in much the same way that PHBs manage people, only more effective.
They're using their grammar skills there.
This is the exact reason why I love the degree that I took. It was an IT degree that was based in business. All the same business courses that business admins take with IT courses thrown it with it. I came out knowing how business is runa nd how IT relates to the business.
I think more colleges should do this so that more graduates know how business works.
I also think this is due to A lot of people in the IT field bbecause it pays alot. I feel most people dont like doing it jobs. I love my it job and I am always trying to improve the network without huge expenditures and without overburdening the people who use the systems.
If IT departments had more people who loved there job and loved doing IT we wouldnt have these problems.
Microsoft Online Services was announced last week by Bill Gates at the Microsoft Office SharePoint Conference. This service will provide hosted Exchange, SharePoint, and LiveMeeting in its initial offering. More info is available at mosbeta.com.
...is a series of tubes :-)
I have seen this at my organization. It is not that they don't understand that IT produces value for the company, it's that it produces it indirectly and is hard to measure. This is why a lot of accountants get to the IT department when they are using activity based costing, they often skip over it and just assign a fixed cost.
I have found that to attempt to rectify some of these problems, the IT department needs to be seen in an evolving context which better supports the organization. By this I mean the IT department needs to have it's own vision in relation to the business, which allows goals to be produced, which allows measurable progress, which allows the organization to see the IT department as not just a utility.
Additionally developing a vision for the IT department allows better communication, team generation and has many other advantages.
When originally realizing this problem I coined the term, electrical plumbers. We don't pro-actively help the business, we just fix it when it breaks.
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Top-level management are usually people people; that's why they did MBAs rather than get real qualifications. Top-level management already have a head full of business domain knowledge (if you're lucky) and techniques for climbing the greasy pole (usually), and have to spend time on inter-company and inter-manager warfare.
I have consistently had problems getting clients to think about how their business works. They have got along for years without having to worry about it because they delegate responsibility to lower-level managers, who in turn delegate to the workers; between them, the various levels of management and employees use their brains and get the job done.
IT isn't like that - you tell a computer to do X and it'll do X, even if it should 'do X unless [really complex exception case], in which case do Y'. So there is an upfront cost to IT of defining what and how the business really does, and then checking it and checking it again. Worse still, form the POV of top management, this requires that the value of the knowledge of the lowest-level staff is acknowledged, while at the same time showing how little the top managers understand the details of their business - WHICH IS TO BE EXPECTED: the top-level guys are paid for direction not operational detail. But people being people, any deficiencies are implicitly taken to be criticism and can be used in inter-manager warfare.
I'd like to note that mitigating these factors is a large part of what led to Agile. But Agile admits that it can fall into the 'hard to predict' trap, whereas waterfall and 'glittering phalanx' claim not to.
I don't constantly second-guess my plumber; I treat him and his solutions with respect because he knows more than I ever will about plumbing. I pay my plumber a lot of money for his expertise.
I've personally seen a company go out of business due to a failed backup system and catastrophic data loss. That company folded simply due to the threat of stakeholder lawsuits.
A decent backup system coupled with a disaster recovery plan and routine testing would have saved that particular company.
Yet another company was almost taken over by federal regulators. Years of IT neglect put customer data and accounts at risk. After repeated failed IT audits, the feds were about 6 months away from taking over operations of the "business". Luckily, the CEO saw the writing on the wall, hired me, and a year later was passing federal IT audits with flying colors.
I've yet to see a company with shabby IT that had the rest of its house in order. Neglected IT is a symptom of a bigger, systemic, problem in the company. Bad IT is not the only symptom of a badly run company, low-morale, high-employee turnover, and executives constantly putting out fires instead of growing the business are signs of management that needs to go.
OK, maybe there are some businesses that can run with IT systems held together with duct tape, but eventually as business becomes more reliant on technology, the long term health of those businesses will suffer.
Risk mitigation is the key here. A good executive team reduces a company's exposure to risk both internally and externally. Dilapidated IT is an internal risk that can be minimized with good budgeting and sound planning. Bad executives look at IT as "the guys that fix the phones and printers". They should be looking at IT as an important part of operations and growth strategy.
-ted
Unix became enormously popular at a time when networked computer hardware was reliable and readily available, but still quite expensive. Software licenses for these systems were comparably expensive. Those economics allowed organizations to justify hiring highly competent staff in order to maximize return on investment. The culture was inherited to some degree from the mainframe culture, driven from the top down, and partly from a research culture, driven by design and engineering principles, to support a reliable multiuser environment with good access controls and other security measures.
Microsoft entered into this environment from the extreme bottom end of the scale. It was all about cheapness. No multiuser model, therefore no access controls, and well, conspicuous neglect of security. One of the tricks, I would say, for creating a perception of affordability was that users were expected to maintain their own systems, a situation which persists at many sites to this day. The real cost of managing these systems, dealing with misconfiguration and security issues and so on, can therefore be hidden, though doing so leads to all sorts of trouble and unrealistic expectations.
As these systems become more complex, the need for more expert system administration becomes greater and more difficult to hide. But these same systems are also becoming cheaper, so the relative cost of system administration goes up and also becomes more difficult to hide.
Compound this with the further complexity and brittleness of retrofitting multiuser security, and there will be plenty of dissatisfaction to share around. I don't envy the users who have to endure these systems and the quality of support that goes with them, nor the staff who have to support them. It's a real shame. Which is why I ended up as an open source guy.
To come back your point about management overvaluing the IT department, I end up thinking that it's a bit like the dilemma we face with valuing a police force that is not as effective as we'd like it to be. This question troubles me greatly. Some police departments, like some IT departments, are frankly dysfunctional. How can we possibly fix them? By tying funding to performance? I think so, but too much funding creates complacency and too little creates despair. From where I stand, IT departments are all too often in the despair zone, and that does nobody good. I wish that I could be as clear about policing. Perhaps someone else can make that point.
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
IT a black box that's not sexy and they don't want to share their bonuses with.
You need to perform a sales pitch and explain in layman terms why execs need to pay for IT services, with respect to the business you're in. Even though they know you have them by the balls as without IT no-one can possibly do business.
A little respect (and empathy) would go a long way to breaking the communication barrier. What, you really think they know how to govern IT? That's your job; you need to contribute and stop bickering.
So here's a way to think of it. The phone company is a utility. What would your company do with no phone service? The electric company is a utility. What would your company do with no electricity? The water company is a utility. What would your company do with no water? Now if you think of Information Technology as a utility, how would your company survive without information?
To an extent I understand the "IT as a utility" mindset. C-levels want utility-grade reliability. They want utility-grade predictability when it comes to costs. They want IT to be so integrated into the company that people think of it like water/electricity/phone service, i.e., they use it without even thinking. The problem is, information as a resource is far more complex than electricity, water, or phone service. You don't need to understand electricity or water to be able to use it. You do need to understand information, and information technology.
Your comment is a familiar refrain to me, but I was that person who you probably hated.
Having played in VMS and 'nix, I quickly tired of the "That can't be done.", "Please submit your software modification and implementation requests by the end of this quarter for next year's end-of-year merit review process." IT types who lived in the corporate "glass houses".
When Microsoft showed up, I loved it. Developing on a platform where I could just say "Could you write down what you want and walk me through it once?"...and then deliver the first prototype in a week or two and then be done with it in a month or so and move on.
Competence was its own reward - before long, I ran the networks and the Vaxes and the 'nix boxes locally - I remember DCL fondly to this day. And "top end PCs"? Not hardly - I used the slowest boxes around for development - make it run fast there, and it will run fast anywhere was my mantra. The only time I went for "top end" equipment was when it was for something significant, like the monitoring system that sped up one line roughly 15%. Of course, I bought top end equipment out of my own pocket for use at home to develop for the business...
The corporate IT boyz eventually got their revenge by spinning the fable that support consolidation was the final solution for cost savings and efficiency (with the help of propaganda from people like Gartner) and so were able to first marginalize and then eventually eliminate me remotely from their center of power several states away.
But it was fun while it lasted.
lollll...and last I heard, my old factory was back to the "Grit your teeth, submit a request, and grind your teeth monthly while you attempt to interpret the inane rejections and delays." model of ye olde "glass house" era, and they don't like it.
I guess hindsight IS pretty clear; they actually miss having "that guy" locally who they could go to with a problem or a request and the "fix for what ailed 'em" would just happen.
On the other hand, Microsoft's operating systems have embarked upon a journey towards eventually becoming hugely rigid structures themselves, so I'd say they have their own "glass house" warriors - who are winning.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
I read through this thread and I have seen many postings of examples about the various experiences and situations that have happened to lots of people. It might be helpful at this point to review the perspectives and priorities of the different players in this game. Lets start at the beginning with the great untold truth. The benefit of enhancing a business process with computer support stems from the pre-automation analysis of the paper system, and not generally the computers themselves. In many cases, if you streamline the business process in order to make it suitable for automation, and you were to stop just short of buying the computers and investing in software, and you went ahead and subsequently used to newly optimized system, you would gain most of the advantage for a lot less cost and complexity. I have known this in my heart for many years, but have spoken of it only a few times. In my youth, in the days of the mainframes, analysts would review the business process and design systems to support that process, and programmer analysts would construct technological infrastructure to automate those processes. In this scenario, the business needs are actually reviewed by business analysts who understand the big picture and how the company operates at a profit. In the old days, computers were big and expensive, and computer time was expensive, and business data processing was scheduled into a queue and was performed on a priority basis at the processing center, and the value of the data being processed had to be worth the analysis, programming time, and data processing costs. There horizontal applications were the programming languages and environments, such as a manufacturer's mainframe and the data processing support services provided in the environment, such as database support bound into the operating system. (IBM main frame style). Some vertical applications were sold openly but many were developed in-house by a company for their own use. The high costs of data processing forced the companies to use a very rigid sequence of requirements/analysis/implementation/operation (then recurse). Then came microprocessors and computers everywhere you look. Suddenly any company could buy computers and use then for company data processing needs at much lower costs. They could shoot from the hip and often things would work out ok, relative to the old way and the old costs. Chaos ruled as people went about applying these less expensive computers to any aspect of the business processes that could benefit from some automation. The discipline of the old days, such as a need to do a business analysis to be sure that the data processing solution was comprehensive and efficient and completely met the businesses needs well away. Rogue technology solutions sprung up and got stuck in closets all over the place, but these solutions were not as well analysed or as complete as the previous mainframe solutions, and often certain aspects of the situation were ignored because they weren't very visible in the mainframe environment, but they were there, such as service plans to keep critical systems up, and centralized backup of data, and often a vendor supplied system engineer with an office on-site filled with microfilm to keep the system tuned well. As these quickly constructed micro-solutions started to fail because of hardware unreliability of consumer grade hardware and software, business managers started having to do some explaining about why the solutions they promoted that was to save money was broken and the business process that kept the company profitable was broken. In the old days, there was a saying about the value of simple saying, "Lets go IBM", because the full treatment of analysts, and programming and good expensive hardware and support usually resulted in a maintainable working system that may still be running even though it was written in COBOL before many of us were alive. What we had since the IBM-PC was a situation were consultants with a good understanding of microcomputers and programming languages and databas
Most likely,
a) the help desk person has been told they may be reprimanded/fired if they do anything against the IT Security policies like install anything not on the "supported software" list.
b) the help desk person is NOT someone who knows what the Hell they are doing, or they'd have a job that pays better than what the management has decided help desk staff is worth.
c) if the help desk drone is in a hurry to get you off the phone, they're being evaluated based on 'call time resolution', which usually is how long it takes them to get you to go away...
clearly, these are not the fault of the help desk drone, they're all the fault of management... and probably not IT management, at that...
If you're an IT programmer, your CIO and Security Officer need to get together and either create a development facility ( read: separate network ) where you can install all the software you want and surf all the scary websites you want, or they need to create a process where you can get your special-purpose development software special-purpose approval in less than 7 months' time. If they can't do either, or don't see the need, you can work to convince them, live with their decision, or find a company with different goals and leadership. The ISO IT Security standard that your company's policies are likely based on says they really need to create that separate development network.
Really, this is likely *all* about your director of Security.