NEVER be dependent on a skilled IT staff.

[Deja Q]

http://whitepapers.zdnet.com/abstract.aspx?docid=264757&promo=100503

Reducing the Dangerous Dependancy on a Skilled IT Staff


Source: Red Hat
Format: PDF

Overview: For the Denkavit Group, many IT challenges kept arising, costing time, money, and resources, due to their outdated IT system which was custom-built. While their current system provided the performance they needed, their custom-built solution was difficult to maintain as the tiniest changes depended on expertise from the small amount of skilled people who were familiar with the system. Realizing this was an issue that could become a major problem in the near-future, a new IT system had to be built to provide updated functionality, ease of use, and reduce the need for a specialized IT staff.

[Cocoa]

1. if the system was difficult to maintain

maybe the staff who developed it wasn't so "skilled." :shrug:

[TheDebbieDee]

3. I think these systems are sometimes deliberately made difficult

to maintain to provide job security to those in the IT Department. (An IT person told me this.)

[porphyrian]

12. I think you have the winning answer.

It's not only about job security, it is also the need to exert one's own version of order on a system, regardless of how efficient or logical its implementation may or may not be.

[liberal N proud]

2. Yeah, Our company fired it's Skilled IT staff and outsourced it to mickysoft

who in turned outsourced to another company and still another.

Now it is impossible to get everyday software outside the mickysoft suite of offerings installed and a help call will easily consume 2 hours on the initial call and countless hours, days and week in the followup before the problem is resolved.

I will take those skilled IT people any day over this crap.

[Wickerman]

4. We had such a system

It was built by a great guy, very skilled, very intelligent and we got along with it great until we needed better firewalls, tele-commuter access, virus updates, new windoze vers, etc. Then, with each update he pushed we'd have 500 to 600 folks unable to work until each were visited by a tech. $$$ There is a reason why out of the box solutions work reasonably well (even with some tweaking). Namely, the box systems have the resources to test, test and test again with all types of software and hardware interactions.

[Deja Q]

6. And it's also why people go to cost cutters over their local small biz barber...

Lower cost, "just good enough", and so on.

The 'out of box' stuff also has conformity on its side. And all the virii, worms, and malware that go with it. And that can hurt far more than not being abble to instantly share data with Company Y because they use a different or custom product.

[Wickerman]

15. lol

I am as anti-big box as anyone, but some of the systems we use now (Lan-desk, F-Secure are a few readily apparent systems that replaced the homespun stuff I saw when I first started working here) have allowed us to do so much more on our Network than we were ever able to accomplish before, and it's done seamlessly to the end user.

Yeah, there are conformity issues - sometimes we are behind in the latest version of this or that software but overall for our now 1,200 clients+ our network runs without a hitch.

I don't like conformity as much as the next guy, and I get frustrated every time I need new software to do my job and it has to be tested before I'm allowed purchase and installation, but I also know what the system was like when we allowed users to bring in shareware, different versions of IE, their own spywares, etc.

Sometimes a blanket statement about conformity is about as wrong as shopping as Wal-mart, Hypnotoad. All sizes may not fit for either equation.

[Wickerman]

17. adding

I am not suggesting that we fire all skilled workers. Actually, our Tech staff is extremely senior and extremely well-paid in an area where we have an IBM plant. They did, however, use that experience and adjusted to the new environments and used certain solutions that keep our system running smoothly.

[zreosumgame]

5. translation: fire all the skilled ones who want to be paid

and 'replace' with interns and recent grads who have no clue about what an office needs. oh, and pay them crap or out-source. Yup, that will improve things for ya...

:nopity:

[Deja Q]

7. Bingo.

And not even train them in. Just kick the existing folks out who just made all the documentation.

Support and design is far more than following notes on a piece of paper. Inherant understanding is important too. Most end users would be clueless at all but the most rudimentary stuff (and even then!)

[Greyhound]

13. translation: fire all the skilled workers and just write us a check every month

forever. Quite the business plan, but Micro$hit has that market pretty well sewn up.

[Zensea]

8. Do you work for Red Hat ?

The thought crosses my mind since this post might as well be an advertisement for them.

[Deja Q]

9. I do not. I do find the concept "dangerous" pertaining to "skilled workers" to be

sick.

Which was the impetus for my post.

I could care less for Red Hat itself, despite being an afficionado of Linux. Which brings us to the irony of Red Hat, a maker of something that can be customized, hyping up "out of the box" rudimentary garbage as if they were some Microsoft clone.

[Zensea]

10. Got it :)

Couldn't be sure in the original context.
Now I see though.

[Deja Q]

11. No problem.

:)

:pals:

[ItNerd4life]

20. Never thought of it that way.

Learn to think differently everyday. I agree completely!

[htuttle]

14. I'm a skilled IT staff who's business is dangerously dependent on me

...and to reduce that dependency, I've done the following things over the last few years:

A) Adopted Mac OSX as the main desktop OS across the business
B) Adopted Java/Swing as the main application language and framework for custom apps (which is nearly all of them outside the 'office' type stuff).
C) Hired more staff (from the inside, so they already know our business), and spent time and money training them (and putting them through outside training) so they can be as fluent with our systems (which must run 24/7, without failure of more than 5-10 minutes) as I am.

By using Mac OS X on the desktop, my virus/spyware worries have dwindled to near-zero, plus with the whole suite of unix tools on every machine, we can automate a huge amount of maintenance and backup stuff. I also love being able to ssh into any machine to see what's going on without having to leave my desk (or my bedroom, if they call me at home).

Java/Swing as a desktop application framework has worked out very well too. For one, it runs really, really well on OSX (thanks Apple, for that one), and Java has become one of the main teaching languages in comp sci courses. I can easily take a fresh CS graduate and have them working on our billing/HR/scheduling applications within a few days or weeks. For the last 5 years, I've hired every one of my assistants right out of our transportation fleet or call center staff. Some have had degrees, some have been self-taught.

I still end up doing most of the 'big new architectural-type code' myself, but since I know that I'm going to have to explain it all to my staff, it keeps me honest (ie., forces me to copiously comment my code, among other things...).

Of course, YMMV. I'm lucky enough that our management pretty much lets me make the decisions I want, as long as everything works and doesn't cost a mint. With the above tools, we hardly spend anything in our IT budget. Other than wages, probably 80% of it is in new hardware as we need it.

[LSK]

16. thats why its better to be developing systems instead of supporting them

Learn to program.

[lumberjack_jeff]

18. Blame goes two ways

A complex system generally arises from complex business requiremements.

Frequently, I've been in the situation where managers ask if feature "z" can be added, but rarely have I heard anyone ask if it's practical or prudent.

Scope creep kills. When I was the IS guy, (really more of a power user, but we were a small company) if someone asked for something that I couldn't do, they really didn't need it anyway.

[ItNerd4life]

19. It's not the IT staff at issue. It's the management of the company.

Most companies ignore their IT staff until it's too late. IT is considered a black hole and too complicated to understand, so they just ignore it.

IT needs to be part of the business plan. IT is an integral part of how a business operates, if management doesn't care how a business operates, then the company gets what it deserves.

[EnviroBat]

21. I've worked for a company that sought to outsource the IT department

and purchase a third party "off the shelf" solution. The problems with this philosophy were many:
The company started small, with a small number of skilled developers to create a custom application to handle the day-to-day functions of the business.
As the company grew these applications still required the ability to be highly customizable in a short amount of time. The need for highly skilled IT staff to support this effort grew, but the company failed to recognize this. Instead, the higher up's made a series of woefully uneducated decisions to seek an outside solution to the problem. They began to realize, after investing huge amounts of money, that these third party magic bullets could not handle the varying needs of the clients, existing and prospective. Often the purchased solution required so much in the way of support, that it proved no more cost effective than hiring skilled labor to build the customized application from the ground up.
Is short, it seems as everyone out there has got the magic bullet, and IT shops are becoming all to willing to cut staff, and replace existing systems with the end-all-be-all. That might be fine for some business, but I've yet to see it work in any of the following industries, (and I've worked in all three). Insurance, Medical, Financial. All rely on complex systems that are developed and maintained by highly skilled IT staff who are intimately knowledgeable of the business.

My 0.02...