Overwhelming Bureaucracy in the IT Department? 591
Nedry57 asks: "I am in the somewhat unique position of being a technology worker, who lives outside of the IT department in my company (a very large organization in the US). By far, the biggest challenge I face is getting anything done due to the bureaucracy that exists, within IT. There are certain tasks (i.e. anything that happens in the data centers) that I don't have the access to do. Even a simple task, like installing more memory in a non-production server, can take nine months and massive mountains of paperwork (no exaggeration), thus costing many times more than it should. The lack of agility is maddening, because I know we are missing significant business opportunities. My management is extremely supportive and despite our excellent track record of success in creating robust/secure applications--our work has passed audit numerous times with flying colors--we get no support from IT. Even senior management can't break through the barrier. I am very interested in hearing the experiences Slashdot readers have had in similar situations." How do you get your technology work done, when your IT department is more hindrance than help?
No Exaggeration? (Score:1, Insightful)
OK, so I'm pedantic. Sue me.
Recognize those things you cannot change.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, it seems that you have fought the good fight. Your managers ahve supported you, you have been at this for a long time, without effect. You now have a choice: accept that it probably won't change and that you can live with it, or leave.
deal with it (Score:1, Insightful)
Get the work done. (Score:3, Insightful)
Not an IT-specific problem (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not an IT-specific problem: all functional areas in large organizations are vulnerable to this sort of bureaucratic barbed wire.
Even a simple task, like installing more memory in a non-production server, can take nine months and massive mountains of paperwork (no exaggeration), thus costing many times more than it should. The lack of agility is maddening, because I know we are missing significant business opportunities.
If you know that there are real costs associated with the lack of agility, you should a) document in detail the actual losses, b) present these figures calmly and respectfully, and c) gauge the reaction from senior management.
That inertia exists only with help (Score:3, Insightful)
If it's the former, you need to find out who it is that's allowing the inefficient environment to foster and take steps (and obviously "you" aren't the answer, but one of his peers or superiors is) to educate him on how things could improve.
If it's the latter, and he's actively promoting that method of interaction because it keeps their costs down, or reduces headcount, or whatever AND if he has the buy-in of his peers and immediate superior, you're screwed. I suggest looking to outsource your department's IT requirements to a 3rd party if you can't bring them into your own group.
Conflicting Goals (Score:5, Insightful)
The real answer if you need flexibility with regards to "non-production stuff" is to not let IT have anything to do with it at all. Create a separate sub-net if you have to to keep the non-production machines off the IT network, and a firewall between your network and theirs to prevent any viruses, or other effects, from leaking from your net to theirs (this may require having to VPN through it just to work with these machines, c'est la vie). Keep the machines in a different room than the official server room. Maintain them all 100% yourself. Then do what you need to. Anything less and you're asking IT to aid in your development, a task they're probably not equipped to do while maintaining stability.
It's not uncommon for companies to have a "developer", "staging", and "live" system setup that are all completely independent, with some established mechanism and metrics to push products from one level to the next.
Re:IT (Score:5, Insightful)
I understand - sort of (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:No Exaggeration? (Score:4, Insightful)
IT departments run amok waste outrageous amounts of money. Those million dollar Oracle licenses and SANs have to be paid for somehow; and bueracracy helps cover up where the money is going.
Move to IT (Score:3, Insightful)
It sounds silly, but if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
They DENY you for a reason (Score:5, Insightful)
"Nothing changed over the weekend."
"You sure about it? Why does the AD server report it's running Server 2003 now?"
"Oh that? We tried to implement Windows Server 2003 to replace our AD server, but we backed it out."
*boggle*
That conversation was with our IT dept. In any controlled environment, things should be thought out, documented and multiple sanity checks performed. Even a dev system can impact a production system if they run on the same segment.
Now, having said that, our IT dept tends to mindlessly enforce rules without thinking about them and getting them to wake up to new technologies (e.g., SOAP, web apps) is like trying to bring around a corpse with smelling salts.
A good IT department should make sure things happen in a controlled and documented way, but should also make it as painless as possible to follow the rules. They should be proactive so if you come to them with something new you want to implement. Not only will they know what you're talking about, but have already prepared a white paper of preferred architecture for performance & security.
A really good IT department brings something to the table.
Someone has to keep the bigger picture in mind (Score:5, Insightful)
However, in my experience every person outside of IT and security groups has this mindset that IT groups hinder them for no real reason.
I do not doubt there is bureacracy that slows every company's process. However, the fact that you want a change made to one system now doesn't change that these IT people are responsible for the effects any change might have on an entire organization. I don't know how many times I hear "But all I want is X". And that person requesting 'X' doesn't realize that 'X' has these 3 possible security issues associated with it. Maybe it won't effect his server even if it is exploited, but that risk has to be evaluated, approved and lord knows what else.
The fact is, every change *must* go through a certain amount of bureacracy to make sure all that it could effect have taken the appropriate level of responsibility.
My best advice is work through your own internal processes to see if turnaround time can be expedited. Maybe all they need is a motivated developer type with your skills to assist in making their change control system better. Or maybe there are things you don't see. Don't assume IT folk are just pushing your stuff back because they don't like you (though that could be a factor). If you can get a 'champion' type in your IT group that can help you get your stuff moved through the most efficiently.
But in the end, it is not up to you to decide what priority your request is given over someone else's. Even a simple request should be evaluated properly and must be given priority that is likely outside the IT drone's choice... Maybe your manager/director type needs to champion your projects to get them pushed through with greater priority .
Oh, and Bill said he didn't wanna give you your ram because you ate his pudding cup.
Welcome to IT (Score:2, Insightful)
Personally I'm considering getting out of the field. I love technology, I love playing with multi-million dollar servers, I enjoy helping users out of a problem (as long as they're reasonable about their problem. If they're not reasonable, they find the BOFH in me.) But the endless rat race in the IT field definatley wears on ya.
Re:deal with it (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure -- if I can read between the lines of what you seem to be saying -- the chicks might not care if you're good at your work or not. But some of those mere "other men" you mention might also happen to sign your paychecks.
The guy was complaining that his company is missing significant business opportunities. Translation: The company is missing significant business opportunities that he could have been instrumental in acting upon. But he can't, because of IT bureaucracy.
OK, so it's not his fault -- but do you think that's going to matter next time he goes in for a raise or a promotion? They'll want to see all the forward-thinking plans he's executed on, and he's going to have nothing, because trying to do anything is like wading through mud.
Even worse, what happens when it's time to a round of layoffs? What justification will he have to keep his job then?
Maybe it's easy for you to just sit there and be grateful you have a job. If it is, it's probably because you've only had one or two entry-level jobs. For people who have had a job for a number of years, however, just having a job no longer seems like Goal #1. Those people start to have other ambitions -- like buying a house, for instance, or a new car, or providing for their families. Maybe you've put yourself through college. Have you put anybody else through college lately? Dads sometimes like to do those kinds of things. They're hard to do when you've spent the last five or ten years sitting at the same desk in the basement, just spinning your wheels.
Risk and Age (Score:3, Insightful)
Most Old Companies are very slow. They are slow becuase they have learned a lot of very painful lessons over the many years. They purposfully slow things down to insure that all the old lessons and painful experiences are taken into account.
The way this is done is through paperwork, meetings, agreements, etc... Think of it as the company is protecting itself from the stupid decisions of the past.
Re:IT (Score:2, Insightful)
Wouldn't it be a little expensive? Just think of all the plane tickets from & to India for each problem ticket this guy opens.
On one hand, if the IT department is genuinely sitting around with their thumbs up their ass, then fire them. Replace them with new workers, preferrably not from the old boys network that they were hired out of.
On the other hand, if the IT department isn't performing these upgrades because the company's high poobahs want their whiz-bang flat-screen gizmondo installed ASAP, damn the other tickets they have open, and the similar useless tasks - where IT is literally working their ass off but can't get to some tickets because of politically connected individuals are interjecting their useless projects into IT's workload - then the solution isn't to fire IT workers, it's to get IT more help. You can throw the workload of 10 people on 1 person, but they're unlikely to accomplish more than their workload - the absolute best you can hope for is for it to take 10 times as long to get through the same workload.
Re:Recognize those things you cannot change.... (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, by this point I have read TFA at least a few times and I still didn't find what was the good fight this guy fought. I mean he doesn't list any steps that he has taken to fight the IT department. He and his management are unhappy with the way IT department works. So just for argument sake, can I assume that you are making assumptions that may not be valid and drawing conclusions that are plain wrong?
I am not denying that this situations don't exist, but most people just whine about it, they don't do anything about it. For e.g. has this guy filed a formal written complaint to the upper management stating that the IT department is not co-operating? Has he tried forging some good rapport with the IT department? The only time any one remembers the IT department is when stuff don't work. Sometimes acknowledging that they are part of the company and their success may lead them to co-operate more. To support my argument read what the author states:
The lack of agility is maddening, because I know we are missing significant business opportunities. My management is extremely supportive and despite our excellent track record of success in creating robust/secure applications--our work has passed audit numerous times with flying colors--we get no support from IT.So apparently according to him all the bad things that are happening in the company is due to the incompetence of IT and all the good things are happening because of his development team. Gimme a break!! That attitude (treating IT department like they are 3rd rate employees, a burden) is not going to get him or any body favors.
Suggestion to author: Try toning down your ego, treat IT department with respect, give them credit and appreciate their work. They are the ones who save your ass when you type "rm -rf /". And ocassionaly buy them beer and lunch and see those 9 months turn to 9 seconds!
Re:Conflicting Goals (Score:5, Insightful)
Just take special care to educate everyone using the private network that it's not supported by the IT department, and questions regarding such are likely to be met with quite a bit of hostility. I work on the other side of the fence from the story submitter, and the general feeling is that even the technologiclly minded developers don't know diddly about maintaining a stable server. People are generally encouraged to set up their own work environment, but as soon as root access is given out it's made clear that it is no longer our (that is, IT's) problem.
More importantly, after a couple years of running a private network, never ever consider passing off the burden of maintaining the rickety development system that is suddenly 24x7 critical to IT. Those kinds of moves are exactly the kind that destroy IT's willingness to accomodate user requests.
Re:No Exaggeration? (Score:5, Insightful)
Reality is the best reward (Score:3, Insightful)
Ultimately if the management chain doesn't see it as a problem, then it's not. Or rather, it's not a problem you will ever be able to do anything about. So once you have that documentary proof, by all means sit and read Slashdot or twiddle your thumbs while you wait for IT to do their jobs. Or even better, use the time to experiment, learn, and gain skills.
Because we know what we're doing, and you don't (Score:1, Insightful)
IT is bureaucratic. Its because we know what we're doing, and you don't. We've made all the mistakes already. When you come to us thinking you know what to do, we create roadblocks to make you give up and go away. Then we just do it the right way. And that takes time and money.
To get the type of reliability businesses have come to expect is hard, and expensive. You can't see the difference between a white-box server and a brand name, but we can. You can't understand why we can't just use a perl script to run backups.
If we let you have your way, you'd buy a couple of memory modules at compUSA, walk up to the server, and drop them in. Why is that a problem?
1. How reliable is the memory? Is it warrantied?
2. Do the timings match the memory already there?
3. Does is have the proper error checking?
4. Did you use an anti-static wrist strap?
5. Did you tell the other people who use the server that it was going to be down (you did turn it off first, didn't you?)
6. What if it fails to reboot. Are you going to fix it?
7. Does the OS support that much memory?
8. Did you introduce any bugs by the change you made?
I could go on and on. The bottom line is, a multi-user server requires complex management, and skilled administration. That is what we train to do. So let us do our jobs.
The DC is not your playground (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been in IT for close to twenty years in a couple small startups to some multi-nationals and in my own consulting business. One thing that lots of IT folks lose sight of is that IT is first a support organization within the larger organization. If the larger organization is sufficiently forward thinking, then they can (arrg, PHB-speak) *leverage* IT to be more competitive. But IT folks still have to make sure the website is up, the file server is accessible, users can login, etc., *before* you start thinking about the add-ons.
If the business doesn't want to spend money on the servers, then document what the consequences and benefits are for their decision. Don't just write that they'll have slower machines, but play Devil's Advocate and write up the business case for not adding memory.
Or, figure some way to optimize your resources so that less memory is required. This can be as simple as turning off services, or as complex as setting memory and processor caps within the virtual partition. And if you've tried all these and you're just short of memory, let them know.
In my consulting business my first goal is to keep my customers' infrastructure running. Next is to save them money versus some other consultant. Sometimes they need to spend money up front to save more down the road. Let them know if this is the case.
Spreadsheets are ammunition (Score:5, Insightful)
That spreadsheet becomes the club with which your managers and directors can beat the IT department because they're effectively offloading cost onto you at a rate of 1,000%.
Re:No Exaggeration? (Score:3, Insightful)
Nice to know a lot of my rising-ridiculously-every-year insurance premiums are going toward horridly inefficient bureaucracies.
Shape up.
Re:Work for Yourself (Score:2, Insightful)
I highly recommend working for a company with a real, successful product, but without aspirations of world-domination.
-Peter
The trick is (Score:3, Insightful)
Tell them your machine is really slow lately and the harddrive runs like mad. Sometimes you get a 'Not enough RAM' error, but you have no idea what that could possibly mean.
Chances are you'll have your stick within a day.
Alternatively, ask your cute receptionist to go over in miniskirt and take a few sticks of RAM; they'll never know what hit them.
Re:Recognize those things you cannot change.... (Score:5, Insightful)
In any case, the best way to get interdepartmental problems fixed is by providing rewards to both sides for working together. Short of that, you can start your own IT group or work with an outside company to get your solutions hosted. Your IT group should be a resource for you -- if they're not, you should be able to use other resources instead.
One of the managers I'm currently reporting to used to run into a similar problem at his last company. He's a 2nd level manager, and he decided that he would pay the salaries of a few people in the IT group in exchange for them specifically working on projects for his team. It worked great, and they were able to push out new releases every couple months. Before he started the arrangement, releases were taking 9 months.
In conclusion, you should give financial incentives to the other team to reach your goals: Whether it's through paying their salaries, or taking away their work by going with someone else. Unless they have an incentive to work with you, they probably won't.
Re:No Exaggeration? (Score:3, Insightful)
Your world's a microcosm - IT focus on big picture (Score:5, Insightful)
So, let me get this straight...
User is frustrated because request to make standard servers non-standard with a custom request in a datacenter requires paperwork and time. User is upset because IT has formal procedures for change control, service level agreements, and standard hardware configs. User doesn't get ram upgrade and posts rant to Slashdot.
User is technical, probably dual boots their desktop to non-supported OS, probably hacks computer stuff at home, probably very smart and capable of supporting five or six computers by him/herself.
IT department probably supports 1000+ machines, and that number has doubled in the last year or so while staffing has been cut.
IT department probably has 200 servers per admin and only maintans this ratio by with consistent server deployments that maintain standard configurations.
A good IT organization understands the company's business.
A good technology worker needs to learn to work with IT to get what they need. You would probably be able to request and justify 10 servers and get them in the time it takes to get a one-off upgrade
The lack of agility is maddening, because I know we are missing significant business opportunities.
Lack of planning on your part does not create an emergency on my part.
Learn how your IT organization works. Work with it.
we get no support from IT. Even senior management can't break through the barrier
Perhaps you don't see the big picture. Perhaps you don't see the corporate IT budget and where you/your team/your project is on the priority list for that budget.
I'm sure there are all sorts of IT departments, but the *good* ones understand the core business and know what's important to the company's bottom line. If your IT department doesn't understand that, then I'm afraid you're going to have to become the IT liason and teach them. Provide them with your requirements well in advance so that they can plan proper deployments. Work together so that you can understand the pain points of IT, and they can understand your hardware/support requirements and the *value* that this will provide to the company.
Wrong Wrong Wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
Tell him what needs to be done, and how you owuld do it. Get his buy in.
Then do it.
3 things can happen here:
1) S/He fires you. You were going to quit anyways.
2) S/He gets IT to start becoming more agile
3) S/He say "Do it". At this point you have to do it. Point all bottlenecks you can't deal with to him. In fact, when you have a people issue you can't solve, go to him and ask for help. You must be successful. When you are it could mean a good promotion, perferably over all those enemies you just made. Enemies are all right, you just have to deal with them calmly, and with authority(or assumed authority if you don't have any real authority.)
Hen you consideringf quiting anyways, you might as well take the risk and shoot for the stars.
Re:IT (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're building an assembly line, do you give everyone a hammer just because it's cheaper than buying different kinds of tools? Most Fortune 500 CIOs would.
When corporate information systems need to be integrated across business units or divisions, then build a development team for that, and have it report to the COO or CFO or someone else who can lean on upper management, rather than just making one centralized self-centered priesthood that controls everyone's systems top to bottom. I'm baffled that anyone can imagine how that could ever work well. That delusion requires a deep ignorance of human nature.
In a well-led enterprise, only a few of the business functions are really important, because they're central to the strategy of the business. Internal IT is never one of those functions. Yes, everyone depends on it, but IT is not really an "it". All employees have similar requirements for air conditioning and paychecks and parking lots and health plans, but IT requirements vary tremendously. Meeting those requirements is hard, and getting hard things done in a corporation requires incentive and accountability. Centralized IT has neither of those, so they say "no" instead of "yes".
Bull manure (Score:5, Insightful)
Beside which, what better way of making things better for those who stay? If management loses good people because of some problem, they just might address that problem.
Re:Recognize those things you cannot change.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Look carefully at both sides of the coin. (Score:4, Insightful)
From the IT side, you can't always respond to every change request ASAP. Simple things like adding more ram and stuff are all easy to actually do, but sometimes there are roadblocks, for instance who owns the system? If it's IT, they may not have budget to add more ram whenever someone asks for it. If it's you or your group, can you get a PO approved?
Does the system really need more ram? I used to get requests for more internet speed all of the time. It happens a lot less often since I started parading out the metrics to show people here that a) we are not using all of our bandwidth to the internet when their issue occurred, and b) I can prove that we can and do use up all of our bandwidth at times.
Policies can slow things down too, but to operate without them is a very slippery slope. I used to hate policies but as I moved up the chain in IT and we began to get requests for things that would create a great deal of work for very little return, or even more important, to deal with difficult HR situations, it became much simpler for everyone to be able to point a the policy that says "As far as the company is concerned, there is no personal data on that company supplied laptop, and you need to hand it over now"
From the non IT side it can be very frustrating dealing with IT some times. If they are really competent,and your requests are reasonable, they will get to your request in a reasonable amount of time. If not, well....
Here is all I can recommend if you aren't getting the service you need. Make the business case to your manager. Show him or her what these delays are costing the company, and allow them to take it up the chain of command with the data you have provided. In any well run company, showing how you can improve the bottom line should be enough to get things moving. Keep in mind that you will win some, and loose some. There may be issues you are not aware of behind the scenes (partnerships, politics between groups, etc.)
Leaving is an option, but save that one for when you are certain that you are dealing with real incompetence and you are sure that there is no way to fix things. If you think you have a good company, do what you can to make things right.
Re:Recognize those things you cannot change.... (Score:3, Insightful)
If the applications you're talking about really are going to have primarily long-term impact, though, then maybe all is not lost. If the impact is long-term then the fixes don't have to be made right away, because not fixing something is not causing short-term losses, right? It sounds to me like you're going to have to live with what seem to be excessive turnarounds on IT projects. Maybe, then, what you should be concentrating on in the immediate timeframe is not a commitment to act on any particular trouble ticket, but rather developing a regular schedule of upgrades or software releases that you can get IT to commit to.
For example, you could work to set up a timeline where such-and-such server will receive three upgrades over the next 12 months. The IT department might argue you down to two updates. That might not be anywhere near as agile as you want, but it's still better than one update every nine months.
Once you've established these update deliverables, then you go back and establish just what an update means. You tell them: We want this and this for the June update. They counter: No way, it's just not possible. We can do A and B but C will never happen. You say: Never happen? Not even by the November update?
By keeping the actual definitions of upgrades flexible up front, you create a kind of agility for your group. Things won't happen quickly, but again, actual speed doesn't seem to be your problem so much as the administrative overhead of just starting the process of getting something done. If you're a programmer, think of it as the difference in system overhead between starting a thread and forking a whole new process.
And from time to time, IT will probably try to explain that you're asking too much of them, but all you have to do is ask, "Why?" Ask them to make a real business case for why they can't do what you want them to do by such-and-such date. And who knows? They give you good reasons. But if that's the case, then it's time for you to go back up the hall and take that information to the next level of management, get it in front of your executive officer, or whomever needs to know about it in order to get the budget, personnel, or upper-level directives necessary to get it moving. The best way to grease the wheels of progress is to do it without playing the blame game -- just gather the facts and figure out what needs to be done to get things back on track.
It all sounds like a big hassle, I'm sure, and yes office politics will be involved. But you'll learn some strategies of how to navigate your way through the business world, and devoting some time and energy this way would probably be preferable to just sitting there feeling frustrated.
Re:Recognize those things you cannot change.... (Score:5, Insightful)
A professional turns around a job in the same amount of time, regardless of his opinion of the other person. Sounds like you're saying the IT department there at best isn't very professional.
If the IT department is having a problem with the author, then they should be bringing it up with his supervisor. I have asshat coworkers as well. I bitch about them mightily, but I don't refuse to do my job just to spite them. Then I'm in the wrong and have no room to complain.
The problem is your little change (Score:3, Insightful)
We had to step back and put the alter in in the middle of the night on a Sunday. And with our usage, we can't even get that time every week.
Bottom line? Get over yourself. You would do better to go talk to IT and find out WHY things are the way they are, and work with them, rather than against them.
Re:Recognize those things you cannot change.... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Business Cases (Score:4, Insightful)
That's a dumb requirement, but it's easily satisfied. The business case is that getting the free upgrade increases the expected resale value of the equipment, yet opting for the upgrade costs nothing. The fact that it helps you get your job done better is immaterial and doesn't need to be mentioned.
Outsourced IT is usually even *less* flexible (Score:5, Insightful)
There are some exceptions, but they'll charge you more money for the flexibility. That's the other way outsourcers make you money - precisely defining the scope of work and charging higher prices for anything outside of it. Sometimes that's a Great Thing - outsiders who want to charge money are often much more willing to do what you want than insiders whose reward structure is that they're a Cost Center incentivized to cut costs. But the kinds of bean-counters who outsourced your IT department on you are usually going to prevent you from getting the extra-value services if they can.
Re:IT (Score:5, Insightful)
Bullshit (Score:2, Insightful)
Right now we have several web servers on our Intranet. NONE have the options enabled for dynamic languages to access small databases (ODBC). Guess why? You got it. We outsource to IBM. They support our DB2. Hence everything is either plain HTML or a Programm that needs what DB2 offers.
I can not get a single flag in IIS changed so that we can use ASP to connect to a simple database. I can not put DATA up to a production server (static HTML content!!!!).
Yes, this is due to contractual obligations. However.. the people who sign those contracts don't listen to IT. Our ZOS mainframe does 97% of our processing and costs the same (ball parking and rounding here) than the 3% of processing done on our midrange. Why? We outsource midrange and mainframe.. but each midrange box is worth $40,000 per MONTH. *sigh*. Just give it to me and I'll go buy a new box every month and live the good life ever after.
Don't even get me started on IT Helpdesk support (also outsourced to IBM).
We're also not going to discuss upgrading single workstations.
Nor are we going to talk about how much they charge to load a program / PTF onto the mainframe.
Outsourcing only saves money if you are interested in not paying redundancies / wages / etc.
Excuse me.. I've got to go, I need a coffee.
Re:IT (Score:5, Insightful)
I've found there is a cycle:
1. Company has ancient central IT group populated by dinosaurs and BOFHs. Centrally run servers are underpowered and undermanned.
2. Individual business areas start putting together their own rogue IT groups, and servers spring up all over the company in every closet. The new groups are agile, but not as secure, and the process is not 100% efficient.
3. CIO centralizes the IT groups so that infrastructre is centralized and well-maintained. Costs plummet and service actually increases since the datacenter can be 24x7 monitored unlike the closet down the hall.
4. CIO discovers he can cut his budget 10% without much loss of quality. CIO gets bonus.
5. Repeat step 4 20 times.
6. Goto step 1...
If people stopped at step 3 with the right combination of central infrastructure and business-focused developers/support then you'd probably hit the sweet spot in terms of the best services and cost.
It drives me nuts to see companies that make billions of dollars a year shaving $1000 costs by undersizing server hardware, insufficiently supporting core applications, etc. IT is a force multiplier - every dollar spent in the IT group can enable all kinds of money-making in the business areas - as long as the IT spending goes to the right places. Nickeling and diming IT is like saving money by getting rid of phones at every desk...
Re:Bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
"I can not get a single flag in IIS changed so that we can use ASP to connect to a simple database. I can not put DATA up to a production server (static HTML content!!!!)."
What I meant here is:
"We pay IBM to upkeep a web server who's job it is to serve HTML content."
It's a file server that people access by typing in a URL. Basically. Yet, no one on our side has the authority to copy files from a LAN drive to a folder on that server.
So, what do we do? That's right. We zip the files up and email it to them. They then unzip it to the wrong place (usually), restore the main HTML dir from backup, unzip the changes to the right place and then people see the new content.
To combat this we are paying for a brand new server, a WCMS and a whole team of people
Anyway. Outsourcing really can suck. I guess it would be OK if the terms, conditions and relationship with the outsourcer were okay.. but usually you run into the program the outsourcers are in it to make money. They don't want to hand control of the program back to you, or to complete a project when there is little hope of them maintaining it.
Anderson Consulting / Accidenture (accenture) ripped us off of more than 5 million, in one hit, then went for me. *sigh* We fired more than 600 people, and are still firing people to make up for the loss of 12 million $$$. It's like a ghost town here now.
Regulatory Issues (Score:1, Insightful)
IT manages a Class 3 Tier IV datacenter with tremendous redundancy. Buying components off ebay doesn't hack it - that's usually why our customer comes with too little budget when they finally officially launch a project. Ebay pricing is usually 50-200% less than certified parts that won't void a warrantee. Or their "in-house expert" thinks that $200 buys 2GB of RAM for a 5 year old HP PA-8000 server. He didn't check whether he could actually upgrade by 2GB when the server already had 8GB (2GB more isn't ppossible), or whether another memory carrier is needed, or what the current memory density of the server is.
Don't get me wrong, 10% of the time, it really is - go buy 2GB more RAM and install it, but the other 90% of the time, it simply isn't that easy - or better, the non-IT application team thinks that more memory will make the system run faster, when memory isn't the bottle neck. I've come across entire server farms with 12 and 16GB of RAM, but without the
Before you bad mouth your IT organization, try to understand what the real issues are. Perhaps you aren't as smart as you think. I know I'm not.
Re:Recognize those things you cannot change.... (Score:1, Insightful)
I used to do IT. I quit. It wasn't worth the stress and anger that all of my 'customers' wanted to give me. I can't help that I didn't have the budget to buy them more memory for their PC or server. They spent all my budget buying software for their new contractors. Yes, finance applied all software purchases to the IT budget. All computer purchases too. Apparently it was simpler for them to setup. So we got stuck bugdeting for the computer/software/upgrade needs of all the other departments. And when they didn't follow their 'plan' it came out of our budget. Yet for the life of them, they couldn't understand why the new employee that started that morning for them at 9am didn't have a PC. Even after I explained that they didn't go through HR and hadn't told anyone in the company they were doing this until after it was done.
Hrm. Come to think of it, glad I left. Broken company. Hopefully the good people will escape before the rats finish grinding through the hull...
Re:IT (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Recognize those things you cannot change.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think you understood what the Parent meant by that. What he was talking about is giving everybody the same level of service regardless of what you think of them personally. If it's your job to upgrade the RAM of John Doe's server, you're supposed to upgrade it in the same time frame regardless of whether John's your drinking buddy or your worst enemy. Doing otherwise is unprofessional.
Re:IT (Score:2, Insightful)
More often that not, my experience of computer departments is that "diseconomies of scale" exist. I've worked in 200+ man computer departments and their productivity per head was far below that in 10-20 man computer department. Want a new piece of software costing £150? In the 200+ man company, you typically had to place a requisition that your boss, who, even though he is running a key part of a company's IT, can't be trusted with a £150 order. The requisition would then go to a committee who would decide whether the purchase was justified. Then the requisition would go to the purchasing department who, at some time, would get around to ordering it. Maybe a month later, I'd get it.
The most successful work I've done is when I've been closest to the client, like in the 10 man computer department, where the user would come upstairs, request a change which we would code and test and have live in a few days. How would I order a new class library in a 10 man company? Go to my boss, tell him I need some software. I'd send him a URL and typically get an email back in a few hours telling me it had been ordered, along with the serial number.
Centralised purchasing doesn't work that well either. In my experience of them, they normally have "approved suppliers" and once the central purchasing department adds in their "charge" to the cross-charge, cost more than if the IT department had just ordered the part online, as well as taking longer to arrive.
Sometimes, things need to be worked on together, but we can see exactly what happens in the outside world. Companies form alliances to work on things together. The small companies I worked for didn't do everything themselves. They outsourced things that specialists could do better than they could. They formed strategic alliances with companies to work together in the spirit of enlightened self-interest.
Some users find a way, anyway. I know users who've found the guy in the admin team most interested in computing and got them to do things like build screen scraping systems to collate things in the way they wanted, because the IT department gave them a 2 month lead-in time.
Re:They DENY you for a reason (Score:4, Insightful)
And when you find a place that is willing to fund enough resources to have such a capable department, please, please, let us know where to apply.
You are absolutely right that an IT Dept (as well as others in the building) should be proactive. However, most IT Departments that I've seen are so under-funded, under-manned, under-resourced that they're scrambling to keep their heads above the water.
Ask yourself why... (Score:3, Insightful)
This poor soul then comes into the company without any knowledge of the wars that ended up by spawning his or her job and gets all surprised because IT is less than helpful to him or her. If you think their job's simple existence means IT lost that war it becomes clear why IT reacts the way it does.
But feelings and corporate politics aside, usually and especially in complex environments, there's reason for what outsiders perceive as bureaucracy in the IT dept. This is not to say that sometimes structures ossify and start abusing their powers, by no means. That does happen, but I believe most of the time that 'bureaucracy' is just IT trying to cope with absurd workloads.
Remember that IT depts have been hit hard by cost-cutting measures. There's never enough warm bodies to tackle all the projects and the backlog is usually huge. Remember that, even if the 'IT person outside the IT dept.' is absolutely flawless in their skills, mistakes and security vulnerabilities, especially done to central resources, will ultimately be blamed on IT and IT will be the dept. expected to correct the problem. Combine these two issues and you begin to understand why IT depts. everywhere are pushing for centralized controls. There's no other way to make sure of a lot of vital things such as: changes are logged somewhere so people know who did them, why and more important, how to undo them if they have to; proper testing has been done before changes are implemented; backups are being done and spot checks are happening so those tapes are actually useful if they are ever needed; all (sometimes thousands) Windows workstations are having security patches applied regularly and anti-virus definition files updated at least daily; etc, etc etc.
We have what I think is a good plan where I work (state university) - and yes, I work in the IT dept.: you administer, you support; you want our support, we administer. In other words, if you have the root/ administrator password, you are self-supported. Why is that? Because our team of 8 people wouldn't have time to fix everybody's computer if all our 8000 users had the freedom to download and install whatever they want.
Although I believe 9 monthes is way too long for adding memory to a server, if someone is trying to do it right it's also not a 10 minute job. In our environment we do have to cope with state purchasing laws and regulations, for instance. Yes, getting a memory stick from buy.com and sticking it into the server is appealing, but it's illegal and that's not the IT dept's. rules. Beyond that, we want to make sure we're buying a trusted brand, the vendor has proper warranty, the server actually supports the part, the server downtime will not create other problems down the line. Not to mention, in times of tight budgets, checking if the additional memory is even needed. Maybe trying to be a bit more efficient in your code or database design would save the company a lot of trouble.
Re:IT (Score:1, Insightful)
Here in Boston our roadways are deteriorating. So are our sidewalks, parks, water distribution,
Why? Outsourcing. All the towns in Metro-Boston employ contractors to do public construction/maintenance projects. The result is that costs creep up, and now has reached levels that put simple maintenance tasks, such as sweeping and trimming trees along the roadsides, on a once-in-a-very-long-time schedule. In more affluent towns, proposition 2-1/2 override is passed every year.
I think this model can be directly applient to IT outsourcing. It might look good on paper, but only a long period of use can show if it works for the organization.
And what of it's social impact? So you lay off that IT worker and hire an OS group. They hire the IT person and offer him starting benefits (they've just been cut down from 4 weeks vaca to 2); that's if they even hire them at all -- they're more likely to offer a contract situation -- no vacation or health insurance. Many of these layoffs will be replaced by overseas workers, and the local IT person will draw on unemployment. The increased need for such socail support programs will force tax hikes, but Mr executive will use tax loopholes and the burden will be shifeted to middle and lower wage earners... who will loose their retirement nesteggs, homes, etc.
The obvious cause (to me anyway) is the vain personal need for a legacy. Executives do it, middle managers do it, presidents do it. They do things that change economic landscapes, but invest little to research the outcome or to study the consequences. And we the people are usually too inward looking, engrossed in our own little worlds - 'should I buy a TiVo or iPod -- what's the best way to ship more mony to japan (american companies perhaps, but where do you thinks these devices are made?).
It is my firm conviction that IT outsourcing, whether it's domestic or overseas, slowly erodes our economic and social structures.
I've been on both extremes. (Score:3, Insightful)
I've determined that once an organization grows beyond a "small business", there cannot be a "no rules" approach. If there is, lots of money gets wasted on hardware for people that self-approve their purchases, and critical apps go down in the middle of the day. The apps aren't fixable until the only person in the company who knows the system gets back from lunch, because he has all the info in his head.
The other side can be worse. My last job was for a company that got the whole ITIL religion. Absolutely everything had pages and pages of documentation attached to it. Service requests got routed through several levels of helpdesk before they got to us. We had a full-fledged project management office that made us spend more time in status meetings than working on actual projects.
There must be a happy medium. Period.