Share your experience: How does your organization introduce new systems?

The introduction of new systems into an organization is essential. If we stay still, if we continue to rely on legacy systems, if we fail to innovate – well, we (or, in reality, the company) will die. As business guru Sir John Harvey-Jones once put it: “If you are doing things the same way as two years ago, you are almost …

[NoneSuch]

The Weakest Link

We used to have a mature process determining the best solutions.

Then we got a new VP who knew better than the IT Staff. (Accounting background) He ditched multiple on-prem servers on a 10GB managed and redundant network for Cloud apps. He dropped robust two year old PC's so everyone could have a cheap laptop that only had Wifi to go "mobile." Everyone is now complaining the laptops are underpowered to do anything. He reduced our security to cinders because it was "stopping people from doing their jobs" (Downloading PII to personal devices, tablets and phones that had no business holding that info). According to him, Apple is the best choice for business hardware.

And he is the loudest complainer when things do not go well, which they usually don't. Never takes any responsibility for his decisions and blames everyone else for his crappy choices. He's opened the company up to heavy duty fines when the PII info leaks and it's only a matter of time until someone loses an iPad.

The only bright spot was he was hauled onto the carpet at the last BoD meeting by one of the more IT friendly directors. All hope is not lost, yet.

[Diogenes8080]

Re: The Weakest Link

The survey omits two favourites, "we've just bought them so go support their tech" (I wonder why the business was for sale in the first place?) and the truly worrying "we've just bought them for their tech". And that is without going through the "two CIOs enter, one CIO leaves" which normally accompanies mergers and, I hear, can be quite traumatic.

[Mark 85]

One place I worked, the manager ordered some PC's and just dumped them on desks with "go read the manual". No training, no thought. True it was early on but still to expect transition of non-tech types to computers was a huge leap. If it hadn't been for a few of tech nerd types (early days of PC's... standard was terminal to the mainframe) the whole company would have crashed.

Other places, things came from the top (board room). Training varied and any software was pretty random at times. For example, some used Word, others used some now long gone word processing like Word Perfect.

The last place, was best. Ideas came from all over. Test teams of users and IT types would try software out. Some went straight to the dumpster, others, were acquired.

[Anonymous Coward]

How does your organization introduce new systems?

Badly.

Make sure the contract managers are seasoned Microsoft KoolAid consumers who believe in the cult of Redmond, and who have no idea that anything is rotten in the state of Washington, they just keep going back to that "Needful Things" shop.

Force everyone to have the same model and spec of laptop regardless of role. "Works for us senior manglers for our corporate emails and PowerPufft decks, so it's good enough for you data lot."

Buy in desktop support from the lowest bidder with the whizziest-looking PowerPufft marketing deck.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Anonymous. Thank fork I'm leaving before too long.

[yoganmahew]

Is it free? Is it cheap? Can you get contractors to do it?

Then it can replace what we have already.

TBH, new process systems are more damaging these days. Everyone does them except poor IT who has to live with the sales system for new prospects, the marketing system for unifying wildly disparate products, the product owner system (so no matter how ludicrously technical your system, some bloke in a suit has to own and direct it), the gazillion forms on SNOW :(

[PerlLaghu]

Leading from the code face

Quite often, solutions are created by the code-monkeys (by being the lead monkey, or convincing the lead monkey it's a good solution).... and then providing a "fait accompli" product to Da Management, and waxing lyrically about how awesome it is.

[Roger Kynaston]

not my experience

Usually, some mid to high level pretend exec goes to a conference where a sales droid persuades them that their product is the must have then we get the job of trying to implement it.

[DavidYorkshire]

There is too much of a tendency in many organisation to decide that new and shiny = better, which is not always the case. If your current systems do the job they are required to do, the best option might be to stick with them.

The issue of constant change has become a lot worse in recent years due to software companies (particularly Microsoft) pushing at an ever-faster pace, and breaking existing ways of doing things to force adoption of their new and shiny way of working - and this normally means tying it into their cloudy services and subscription model and thereby making the constant change even more of an issue as Microsoft then has absolute control.

[jdiebdhidbsusbvwbsidnsoskebid]

IT support

Where I work, our IT support is pretty good, driven by the fact that it is full of people who know what they are doing, know our corporate systems inside out (actually coded some of them, not just bought in and installed) and actually want to help.

It's a good example of the benefit of contracting out almost all aspects of our IT to a single source with fairly long multi year contracts too (but with our own corporate oversight for requirements, security etc. ). Obviously it needs good relationship management to keep that going, which does happen - our IT support people aren't off in their own building/site/country but in our offices, alongside the regular staff. Also, some of the IT contractors are the same people who were doing the job in house 10 years ago.

The higher level corporate shenanigans get in the way sometimes. Like when you can see the inner struggle behind their eyes when you ask them to do a quick task (password reset for example). They'll do it there and then but through gritted teeth say "my boss says you need to put in a service request first, but I know you want it done now, so I'll do it and can you submit the request this afternoon?". Or sometimes they'll do the service request for you as well!

[IamStillIan]

External

Also seem to have missed "Client pressure" as an option. As a small organisation with significantly larger clients, it's not uncommon for them to "expect" as do do things Thier way, regardless if whether there's any advantage or it even makes sense in the situation.

Tick box compliance stuff...