One of the most satisfying aspects of my job is helping people. My customers aren’t necessarily IT literate so I get the satisfaction of helping them achieve something they otherwise wouldn’t. For a long time I felt that IT consultants, developers, DBAs and the rest didn’t show enough respect for or understanding of their customers needs.
(I’ve no time for an arrogant DBA who thinks that users are just trouble and every activity is a precious favour granted. It’s *great* helping people, fixing broken systems and suggesting new and improved approaches. We’re lucky to have such interesting, well paid and challenging careers.)
Over time the situation has improved, but I wonder if we haven’t swung too far the other way. A common mantra these days seems to be ‘IT only exists to serve the business and its activities need to be driven by the business’. This is fair enough, because IT doesn�t generate any revenue and so needs to assist the other areas of the business that do.
What I *don’t* think it means, though, is that I should do everything the business tells me to, without question.
What’s the point of businesses employing skilled resources and then just using them to blindly carry out activities in a manner decided by someone who doesn’t have the first idea of the issues involved? One of the main casualties of this approach seems to be preventive maintenance. I’m losing count of the number of times I’ve highlighted that something is an accident waiting to happen and been told that avoiding that accident isn’t a priority. Over time more priorities come and go, and the risk lingers. Eventually the accident happens. Everyone conducts a post-mortem and says ‘Okay, we must fix these things and not let it happen again’. At a bad site it’s soon forgotten because a new priority comes up. At a good site you get to fix things in the area that caused the problem. It won’t end there, though, because preventative maintenance is constant. The business doesn�t particularly care about being on the latest patch release because there’s no (easily measured) business benefit. Of course, when the doo-dah hits the fan and Oracle won’t support you until you apply a patch to production (which will need to be tested in dev and test first), business managers will be screaming about what’s taking so long to fix things!
Another area of pain over recent years has been flailing around wildly trying any idea that crops up in a manager�s mind to fix problems, rather than slowing down, looking at the problem properly and coming up with a proven solution. If you’re lucky, one of the quick fixes might work, but I still think that the chaos and wasted energy gets everyone down and it�s easy to introduce new problems. In fact, you’re probably unlucky if a quick fix works, because people will settle on that approach from now on!
Look, I love my customers to bits (really). But here’s the thing � I wouldn’t dream of suggesting a marketing strategy because I know absolutely nothing about marketing. So why do so many non-IT managers feel that they are qualified to make sensible judgements about IT strategy? The business pays my wages, but I sincerely hope that the reason they�re doing so is because I know some things that others might not and so I can give sensible guidance before they make their decision. It seems to me they’re wasting a stack of money on expertise that they’re not necessarily taking full advantage of.
Phew! At least I didn’t decide to talk about IT managers – too close to the bone, I reckon 😉