And more about PC lockdown

Dear Bob …

Normally I agree with you, but I guess this time, I am one of the prudes (“The new prudes,” Keep the Joint Running,” 7/9/2007), and am somewhat pleased with it.

Why? I work on a team of 6 people supporting server and desktop OSes, all applications that run on them as well as the imaging system. With all of the software we support, we had to come up with standard documentation that is MANDATORY for all installs, upgrades and changes. Before we had this we were always re-inventing the wheel and were never cross trained. Only by having our boss harshly enforce this documentation requirement, were we able to greatly IMPROVE our customer support.

Another place that I am pleased to be a prude is what software we allow on the users PCs. I have worked for companies that did not enforce this and were hit by software audits that all of the sudden became every expensive for the company as people were bringing in apps from home to improve their productivity.

Another example is that we have fought, and lost the battle to install the MS office suite on all PCs. Our management does not feel it can afford the cost. If all users were to install this because the felt they would be more productive, the financial costs to the company would be too high. While I wish I had the unlimited resources of a consultant, we cannot afford to give each user a copy of the software that they feel is best. When you count the soft dollar costs of packaging, installation, license management, updates, patches, security patches, the costs go up quickly!!! Standardization make this less expensive.

I can no longer keep track of how many PCs have had to be rebuilt because of some non-standard piece of software that the user brought to work and installed. My time would have been better spent on other things than rebuilding those PCs, even with all of the tools we have to automate the process.

The all or nothing approach as you presented does not work. What I mean is that my approach of being a prude all of the time, in every way I can does not work, just as the tone in the KJR of allowing a free for all in the name of efficiency does not work either. There is room for both approaches. Good managers (management) knows when to give, and when to hold the line.

Just my two cents,

– A new prude

Dear Prude …

It’s strange – whenever I write a column suggesting that end-users should be allowed to experiment and innovate, many readers interpret it as a recommendation for a free-for-all. That isn’t the case. If you want a full account, take a look at “Revising the End-User Computing Manifesto, 10 years later,” KJR 7/31/2006). It should clarify my position.

By the way: Having a standard procedure for establishing a standard build doesn’t make you a prude. It makes you a professional. Likewise upgrades. It’s when all changes have to funnel through IT that there’s the potential for creating a bottleneck whose benefits don’t warrant the costs.

The one statement in your letter I suspect might be exaggeration is the number of rebuilds resulting from non-standard software. My own experience has been that maybe 5% of all end-users would even be interested in installing anything. Doing the numbers, in a company with 1,000 employees that would mean 50 would be installing non-standard software. Since not every non-standard package causes a PC to blow up – far less than half, I’d say; most of these packages are professional-grade software whether or not IT happens to have approved them. 20% would be a heavy failure rate.

If I’m remotely close, this would mean a rebuild rate of about 10 PCs per thousand in a typical year. I rate that as an annoyance, nothing more.

My biggest issue with the environment you describe is this: Your company has decided not all employees need MS Office. I’m willing to bet this decision was made, not by each supervisor and team lead – the people who actually know what employees do and what tools would be valuable in accomplishing it – but by someone higher up in the hierarchy.

I’d say it’s highly likely the decision-maker is focused solely on cost-avoidance, not on enabling value creation. Equally likely is that the decision-maker’s name is now on the policy, which means changing anything in it requires the decision-maker to acknowledge that he/she didn’t get things entirely right. Policy modifications are, in this situation, filtered through egos rather than business cases.

If you’re one of the employees who officially doesn’t “need” MS Office but whose supervisor gives an assignment that could be accomplished much more effectively with MS Office, what’s the likely outcome? It’s a classic example of IT saying, “We won’t do it for you and we won’t let you do it for yourself.”

I presume, by the way, that you and your staff took a close look at OpenOffice to see if it could do what the company requires while being affordable enough to provide copies to all employees.

Arguing against a free-for-all is arguing against a straw man. You could make the same statement about my argument against total lockdown, except for one thing: Lots of IT managers really do advocate total lockdown, so I’m not arguing against a straw man.

– Bob

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