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Should IT Shops Let Users Manage Their Own PCs?
An anonymous reader writes "Is letting users manage their own PCs an IT time-saver or time bomb waiting to happen? 'In this Web 2.0 self-service approach, IT knights employees with the responsibility for their own PC's life cycle. That's right: Workers select, configure, manage, and ultimately support their own systems, choosing the hardware and software they need to best perform their jobs.'" Do any of you do something similar to this in your workplace? Anyone think this is a spectacularly bad idea?
In a perfect world this would actually work. But then we'd run into pirating like crazy and companies being sued all of the the place. I certainly support a more liberal approach to what employees are allowed to use on their machines, but restrictions certainly need to be in place.
The Computations of AdamR
http://www.adamreyher.com
If I went through IT at work, I would still be using Photoshop 5.0 and some ancient version of Pagemaker. They're so slow (and this is a true story, honest to God) that the last time they approved any work software for me, the company had stopped making the version they approved before they finally approved it.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
This sort of thing would never fly at a sufficiently large company. Once you get to a certain size, the pressure to "standardize" becomes too strong to resist. I suppose this is reasonable, because the licensing, support, etc. is much cheaper this way. Oh, and arguing that individual choice makes workers more productive is useless: productivity can't be easily measured -- therefore it doesn't exist.
It's a good idea if your users have a clue. It's a bad idea if they don't. It entirely depends on the users.
In my shop we're all coders, so that plan would work. In fact it's vital to our work. Originally we were locked down and had to have an admin install pretty much anything we wanted to use. IT became an inhibitor rather than a helper. They eventually had to lift the ban. The policy was in the way.
On the other side of the coin, I've also held IT positions managing users. Giving some of my former customers the keys would have been an immediate disaster. In that case a lockdown was a lifesaver.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
reimage, reimage, reimage until the user learns
So you want to pay desktop support techs to re-image users' computers all the time? In our company re-image takes about 8 hours due to hard drive encryption, which translates into lost productivity of the user.
I've worked as a desktop support tech both in my college where users had admin rights to their PCs, and for a company that had locked-down environment with packaged software where almost nobody had admin rights and no non-approved software could be installed. I'd say on average I spent 3 times longer to put the users in the college back online, and to restore their data. Of course there's the whole issue of weatherbug/toolbars/ActiveX/other crapware that the users installed on a regular basis.