The IT department works for you and not the other way round

I had a number of feelings when I read this post fromMediaSnackers (I company that I follow, like and respect by the way). The IT Manager in me smarted a little, and I wanted to stand up and defend IT Departments around the world, glowing with pride at the helpful, appropriate, efficient service that we all deliver to our organisations.

Sadly, I don’t think I can do that.

But I can put forward some of my rambling views as to why IT Departments are often seen as barriers, rather than enablers of all of this wonderful technology that we have.

I’m the first person to agree that there are some really bad IT departments out there, and there are some really bad IT people in those departments, often running them. Being an IT person is no excuse for being an unhelpful bastard, but for some reason the industry does seem to attract its fair share of power hungry, self-centred types that seem to revel in knowing more than someone else.

But I don’t think I’m one of those, and I know of lots of other IT Managers and departments that are willing, helpful, passionate and communicative. So why is the IT department often seen in such a negative light?

I think some of it comes down to the nature of what an IT department actually does. We have to manage incredibly complex systems, and make them simple and easy to use for our end users. We have to balance usability with systems that are functional, secure, easy to scale and (normally) affordable. As well as managing the complex technical stuff, we are also often tasked with providing training for our end users. Oh, and because we can make computers work, we are also expected to be able to make projectors, printers, cabling, hifi systems and cellphones work as well. To be a good manager or member of an IT department, you have to be incredibly flexible, and unfortunately, techy people often aren’t.

Throw into the mix that often the people that are really good technically are the worst people to try and explain something useful to the end user. It’s rare to find someone who can code complex vb scripts with their eyes closed but can also explain to an end user why their 500 page full colour print job is taking more than 20 seconds to render to a printer that’s 15 years old, politely. But this is often what IT generalists in IT departments are expected to do, and this is where a lot of the problems stem from.

But the organisations have to take some of the blame. They do need to take IT ‘seriously’. They often want the world, but they don’t want to pay for it. They won’t invest in good infrastructure, good people, and professional development to train the people at the coalface. This often means that things don’t work, or they don’t work easily or efficiently, and then the IT department takes the blame, and gets bitter about it, and then things descend into the vicious “them vs us” circle that I’ve seen time and time again in businesses and schools. This is often when IT departments start saying no and being generally unhelpful.

Time was when a system or service wasn’t running, it wasn’t a big deal, but these days, if a server is down, the network isn’t functioning or (dare I say it) the Internet isn’t working, then a lot of people simply cannot do their jobs. This means that the people managing these departments have a lot of things to consider, and a lot of responsibility. But in my experience a lot of these people are woefully unqualified and lacking in the skills necessary to handle this responsibility. So when the pressure comes on, they respond by saying no to everything. But often this comes back on the organisation because they won’t pay enough to hire good people.

When I have to say no to something (more often than not it’s actually “not now” rather than no) I ask myself if I’m just saying it because it’s something I don’t want to do, or because my experience and knowledge tells me that there are some very good reasons why we shouldn’t do it. If it’s the latter, I’ll try to explain why in a way that end users, or other decision makers understand, without them having to know the in’s and out’s of Active Directory  or Cisco switches, because that’s what they pay me for.

Personally, after 15 years in the job, I’ve come to see myself as an enabler of technology, rather than someone who puts up barriers. However, I’m a ‘cautious enabler’. If I’m asked whether we can do something with technology, as a network manager I have to take into account everything that’s involved – technical, infrastructure, finance, security – all come in to play. By its very nature though, managing complex IT sometime entails playing ‘bad cop’ to some people with some brilliant ideas. If we didn’t, the IT systems (and remember, that word systems is really important) would fail, and then everyone would be pissed off, including the IT people……

IT systems do need to be managed skilfully, and sometimes that means saying no (or “not now”).

Having said that I think we’d all do well to remember once in a while that (as the post says) the IT Department works for the company, not the other way round.

End of ramble

John Driver