Back in the days when I was a wage-slave and subject to the passing whims of a megalomaniac boss, the IT manager trusted me to deal with many small, everyday technical problems that arose in my workgroup. But I wasn’t on the IT team. I was merely - shock, horror - an end user.
In today’s highly regimented corporate computing world, such an example of trust seems to be rare indeed. At the time, however, it was a practical approach that suited both parties: the under-resourced IT team wasted less time on trivial tasks, and I didn’t have to kick my heels waiting for support to turn up.
The golden rule was simply that I shouldn’t try to do anything too drastic. Move peripherals between machines, yes. Undelete files, no problem. Re-image someone’s PC, no way.
When I left full-time employment for the joys of freelancing, I was glad I had this experience. Now I am classed alongside silver surfers and teenagers. No service desk for me, no immediate response, no “I’ll pop round in two minutes to plug that mouse in for you”. Life outside the corporate comfort zone is a diet of README documents and endlessly being put on hold by someone in Bangalore. Never mind something done properly if you want it done at all, you have to do it yourself.
But while contracting at a company recently, I found that the IT project team had rolled out an enterprise-wide installation of a well-known software package without any of its help files. As a result, after their initial training course, hundreds of end users are expected to use the software without access to online help, product manuals or any documentation whatsoever.
When I suggested buying a cheap book about the application in question for each bank of desks, or even just one per department, the idea was dismissed without hesitation by the IT heads, who reasoned that no one would ever bother to read it. At the same time, one end user after another was asking aloud why they couldn’t call up the help tool like they could do with the old software.
What’s the thinking behind this decision? Is it protectionism on the part of the IT elite? Or is it, as I suspect, a cynical view that all end users are boneheads who need their hands held at all times? It just doesn’t seem to make sense for an IT department to end up servicing unnecessary help calls that could easily be “backsourced” to the person making the call. Besides, surely there is value to the organisation in encouraging staff to develop their own IT skills?
Has the corporate IT climate developed to such a restrictive state that users can’t even be trusted to press the F1 key any more?
