Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Ask Slashdot: Biggest IT Management Mistakes?

Posted by BeauHD on from the whoopsy-daisy dept.

snydeq writes: Sure, nobody's perfect. But for those in charge of enterprise technology, the fallout from a strategic gaffe, bad hire, or weak spine can be disastrous, writes Dan Tynan, in an article on the biggest management mistakes in IT. "Some of the most common IT gaffes include becoming trapped in a relationship with a vendor you can't shake loose, hiring or promoting the wrong people, and hiding problems from top management until it's too late to recover." What are some other career- and company-destroyers you've witnessed in your years in IT?

4 of 341 comments (clear)

  1. "No. 1: Vendor lock-in" like buying Microsoft? by greenwow · · Score: 5, Informative

    In about March, we started moving everything to Microsoft, and they audited us in August. About $250k worth of internal time later, they gave us the final bill. We didn't know, for example, you couldn't run Visual Studio Professional on Amazon on nondedicated hardware. Amazon charges $2.185 per hour for that which is $19,140.60 extra per year. We're paying $1,199 per year already for VS for every developer, so we assumed we'd be allowed to use it with no extra charges. We were wrong. I think the total bill after the audit was over $130k plus the extra almost $20k per year on Amazon. We don't even yet use Windows for production(customer facing stuff)!

  2. Re:frosty by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Informative

    Implementing SAP
    Outsourcing
    Outsourcing your SAP implementation

    Whenever I talk to someone from a company that uses SAP, I always ask if they are satisfied with SAP and would choose to use them again.

    So far, this many have said yes: 0.

    For comparison, this is the number that have said they are happy with Oracle's ERP: 0.

  3. Re:Failing to manage customer expectations by lucm · · Score: 3, Informative

    Practically every mistake in IT is recoverable, except for failing to manage customer expectations.

    Ok, let's see:
    1) Threatening to expose hackers AND using the same password everywhere including in your unpatched CMS (HBGary Federal)
    2) Botch manual deployment of a trading algorithm and lose $440 millions in 45 minutes (Knight capital)
    3) Do not handle race conditions properly and expose patients to doses of radiation 100x higher than expected (Therac-25)

    and the list goes on...

    --
    lucm, indeed.
  4. Re:IT is NOT a cost center. by lucm · · Score: 3, Informative

    The biggest mistake any company makes? Treating IT as a cost center.

    Unless your company sells IT services, by definition IT is a cost center. This is basic accounting.

    There was a good Dilbert about this in 1997.

    http://dilbert.com/strip/1997-...

    --
    lucm, indeed.