Alignment, staffing and culture are often more critical than software and apps
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Joseph A. Montione
says:
Let us just call it Stealth (Bank's do not like the word rogue ):
As I learned running the HRIT department at the 14th largest bank. "They are hungry for technology!"
Rapid Application Development is not a bad thing if the Director of Application Development knows the business and the safe technologies. I was in a business unit competing with Central Technology.
We have two different goals. The business unit want's it's customers happy. Central technology want's the stockholders happy. How can you please both?
They have to ask for it! When they do, it is off to the testing lab with google toolbar!!!!
Joseph A. Montione
Founder: GTOpendatabase L.L.C.
A Solutions Provider
Deb Lawley
says:
As a public library part of our business is to provide compter access to the public. They expect to have access to consumer technology. However the IT department makes unilateral decisions as to what can be offered and what can't. And generally the result is we can't offer new services because of the same three excuses 1) It's a security issue 2) the department is overworked 3) the department needs more staff. So instead of technology being a toll to increase the productivity of the staff, the staff are viewed as a threat from which the technology must be protected. So, the customers go away unsatisfied, the staff is less productive, but the technology is "safe". How does this attitude serve the organization? The top expense in almost every organization is personnel. How does making personnel less productive in order to protect the technology help the organization? How is this a positive return on investment?
Every department is overworked and under-staffed. IT isn't special in that regard. That's why we invest in technology. So until IT realizes that they need to help staff work better instead of viewing them as a threat, staff will continue to find ways to work-around IT to get the job done.
Topic: Business Culture
Unwritten rules that guide employees' actions are tangible and relevant to the business
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As someone who is responsible for the successful execution of IT in my company, I'd like to put in my $0.02. I would surely be called a "bad cop" in this case, because we do not condone people using non-approved software. There are many legitimate reasons for this, including security, licensing, and bandwidth considerations. I'm all about working with the user community to find creative solutions to business problems, but it has to be done in a controlled, prioritized, and well communicated manner. The root cause of technology lag in IT is usually tied to a lack of staffing, resources, and executive buy-in. In our case, we are working at 110% to keep things running, satisfy compliance requirements, and implement the few initiatives that have concrete ROI. There's not a lot of time to push Wikis, RSS, mashups, blogs, and the host of other really interesting stuff that isn't required to keep the lights on. If that makes me an unresponsive IT troll, then I say "zug zug"...