I feel prompted to write something today about the frustration I often feel when my proffesion is disparaged for actually just 'doing it's job', especially by people who often display an incredible naivity about the real world of IT.
I know, opinions are free and we all have them and I know that people prefer to make their own choices in life rather than be told what to do, but lets face it, work is not the same as hobbies and when people express a really naive view about IT and then wonder why that view isn't being followed in a corporate or institutional context then I sometimes just want to scream.
I was watching the X Factor the other week (yes, I know, very sad and this might sound like a bit of a tangent, but bear with me) and as usual in the early programmes I found myself pondering why on earth some of the really bad singers seem completely surprised to be told that actually they have no tallent at all. I was struck by the thought that the reason for their delusion is that they don't respect the proffesion of singing. They don't appreciate the years of work, the effort involved (or sometimes just raw tallent) that singing at an international standard entails.
This seems to be a common tendance in society today. When we go the the doctor we'll check the diagnosis and any prescription on the Internet to arrive at our own opinion, if we need legal help we'll again look to the Internet to arrive at our own opinion of the law, and if we were having building work done then again we'd probably all have a view on the right way a builder should be working thanks to all the DIY programmes filling the TV schedule.
But, is there grounds to think that an opinion arrived at from just a few hours research into these proffesions has any real merit?
This lack of respect for what a proffesion or trade really takes seems to be the norm.
There are always people expressing views about IT based on their experiece 'playing' with different operating systems or software, from reading a few articles about the latest technologies or from just being frustrated with the systems they see at work, but do these views have any real merit in the work place? What experience/skills do IT proffesionals have which gives us a different perspective to make different (difficult) decisions which can see to fly in the face of these naive views?
Well, one of the key things people naively ignore is that an IT proffesionals role is not to provide the latest wizzy shiny thing to the users, but to provide systems that meet the business needs. That's 'needs' and not 'wants' - and two of the key things any business/institution NEEDS are:
* value for money
* business security
These both lead to all sorts of compromises, often complex, which can be difficult and frustrating for eveyone, but if their not met then the business won't be arround too long to worry about it.
One of the oft repeated mistakes is to think that somehing being 'free' means it is automatically the best value for money. If only life were so simple!
Very often, things that appear free up front have much greater total costs. Take for instance Linux for the desktop. Now, I like Linux. I've used it on and off since just about it's inception, compiling my own kernals back then, watching the development of the GUI and the very many open source apps that now get bundled with it, and it's great fun and petty much usable these days. But - what does it actually cost? Well, I know it fairly well (and have a very good theoretical understanding of it so i can quickly upskill when i need to) so when I play with it I can pretty much solve any issues that might arise, but how common are these skills in the market place? What training and certification exist for employeers to judge if the people they employ know much about any particular distribution they might choose to adopt? Critically, how much more do you need to pay your IT staff to keep them once they have those skills? How much more does it cost to provide additional training to the vast majority of non-IT staff to help them transfer their often already limited ability to use MS Windows onto a different desktop, let alone teaching them how to use a different Office package and all the resulting additional support costs from incompatabilities with other people. I'll give you a clue, it's not free!
Let's look at the choice of web browser. Yes, Firefox is fine, with a lot of very useful add-ons and with slightly better standards adherance than IE 8 still (perhaps), and it's free too right? True, but in global market share, Firefox is still only about 1/3 as widely used at IE (from this last months figures, and yes I know IE is still drifting down very slowly, at a rate that won't see a significant change for another few years though).
That means, most web sites are still designed to work with IE first. They have to be or else alienate the majority of their users still. That also means that your IT support staff HAVE to support IE even though most of them would probably much rather see the back of it and prefer using FF themselves. Since they have to support IE as a platform, adding another one adds to complexity for the infrastructure systems (and development of them), decreases support efficiency and hence adds significant cost to the business. So, unless Firefox can deliver a very clear business benefit or is absolutely NEEDED for something then the prudent thing is to just not use it. Why did VHS beat Betamax? Not because it was a better technology, but because of market share. It's chicken and egg, but your IT dept can only react to the world, not re-invent financial reality.
Now, with Firefox for instance where I work we take a pragmatic view to minimize the impact and allow staff to install and run it themselves if they choose. Since the vast majority don't care and so don't bother, the support overhead is minimized while allowing those who may have a requirement to use it without putting barriers in the way of them getting their job done. The hidden costs to the business from those staff having to support themselves or getting a reduced level of support centrally exists, but is hopefully minimized.
But let's look at something more clear cut, antivirus software. Sometimes the choice of AV software is criticised by users who might have had a good experience with a consumer product at home and feel the choice in the workplace is therefore wrong because they percieve it to be causing them problems. Installing and mIntaining an AV program on one or two machines is a very different thing to doing so on a few thousand machines. Therefore the features which are NEEDED in a large scale deployment are quite different. Active directory integration, update bandwidith use, the frequency of updates requiring a restart (very bad for servers), comparability with specialist applications, remote monitoring and repair etc are all very important features for a large installation which wouldn't affect a home user at all. In addition, the ability to 'lock down' the software to prevent users putting the business at risk by disabling the software is key for business continuity planning and assesment.
Do IT staff take delight in preventing people doing their jobs? No, that's a silly sterotype that I would expect people to recognize as such. Are IT departments staffed with idiots who don't know how to do their job? Well, i'm bound to disagree with that! Do we HAVE to sometimes make difficult compromises between allowing freedom and business needs? Definately, and to make those choices often requires careful balancing of conflicting requirements and understanding the business to do so. Is that something you can do naively? No.
So, next time your IT department seems to be out to get you, give them a little more credit - you need to trust that they are proffesionals making very difficult compromises.
....but don't stop telling them what you NEED, but please don't mistake that for what you WANT.
-- Post From My iPhone
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