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The User’s Strike Back!
I’ve posted a few times about the importance of understanding the user, and ensuring that they are happy, productive and supported by IT. It all sounds very mom and apple pie, and yet, it continues to amaze me how many stories I hear about IT departments that simply don’t understand that they are in fact a service department.
A fantastic example is an article I just read on CIO.com entitled Stupid Users Are So Stupid. What a great example of the point. The writer points out that he simply wants to be a ‘happier worker’ but then laments that perhaps he is asking for too much.
IT has to come out of the black box and realize that times are changing, and service requirements are increasing. It is not enough to say ‘I can’t do it, and I can’t tell you why’. Time to share the secret handshake and open up the book of secret three letter acronyms. The fact is, many IT departments have become trapped in their own processes and history, and may in fact not be flexible enough to adjust to the future. While this may indeed be a boon to outsource firms (who don’t have the luxury of simply saying no, since we clearly know who are customers are), it is not good for the industry as a whole.
Businesses need to learn to trust IT and trust that IT not only understands business needs, but wants to understand business and user needs. A true service attitude that makes it clear that IT infrastructure is a tool, and tools are to be selected to fit the needs of the user, rather than the user being forced to use the tool given them (for some reason I picture a construction worker pounding a nail with a wrench at this point).
At the end of the day, job security will come from truly meeting business needs and creating flexible policy that enables individuals to truly be happy with their IT infrastructure, not from adhering to old policies that were created to make IT departments easier to run. If IT must be slightly less efficient to make business more productive and efficient, then so be it.
That is what service providers do, after all.
Rant over -
Happy Computing
Richard Brunke
