IT, Users, and Communication

I was going to let this article slide, and not get all meta-bloggy about it, but the rebuttal really tweaked me. It's all about what users get to install on their work machines, and IT's reaction.

They both miss the point, I think.

Mr. Manjoo related a story about Firefox, and the crowd cheered. If there was really that much demand for it, then it was a failure on the IT department's part to know that it was wanted, and if they knew that, not at least acknowledging it clearly. There's plenty of good reasons not to upgrade.

What Mr. Manjoo missed is that there are tradeoffs to the freedom to install whatever you want, most of them related to support. A lot of IT policy is driven by how much they have to provide that support. Less money means coarser support - heavily locked down machines, aggressive re-imaging, or similar. Things that don't require a lot of people time.

The confirmation bias that both articles triggered in me, though, was that it clearly showed that in neither case is the IT department and the users communicating.

Good IT is hard, not just because of the technology involved, but because you have to make long term decisions which will permit you to react to users ever-changing needs and wants.

Remember, we're here for them, not the other way around. When I walk into a shop that doesn't live that attitude, I know I'll find a lot of problems.