"Rogue IT" 11

[vbainchicago]

I've recently found myself in an interesting situation and wanted to get "unbiased IT" opinions. Here's where I'm at:

My "job is not IT related. I've been in purchasing for 9+ years with two different companies. My passion has always been "IT" related - database design, SEO, building websites, building and troubleshooting PC's, networking, etc. I've been working on IT projects on my own for a little over 10 years. I've never had any formal training - everything I know I've taught myself through books, trail and error, and forums like this one. 3 years ago I even started my own consulting company on the side and have been doing fairly well.

I've been with my current company for a little over 4 years. When I started, the "systems" in my department were a joke. Nothing was automated, and no one had any idea how to use even basic functions in MS Office applications. The person who trained me actually told me "Excel is just like Word only it has boxes to help your keep things organized".

In order to do my job more effectively, I designed databases in MS Access. When my co-workers saw that I could get done in 5 minutes what took them 5 hours, they took notice. My systems grew from a single user (me) system to an integrated system that over 25 people use on a daily basis. Some newer employees have even been trained on my software since the day they started, and couldn't do their job effectively if you took my systems out of the picture.

I was recently called into a meeting with my boss (he's pc illiterate) and two of the head IT people from our company. It's a decent size company (over 500 people) so I had never even met the IT people before. I was informed that the work I've done over the last 4 years is what they deem "Rogue IT", and that I was to cease any further development on any system. I was also supposed to hand over all my passwords (I implemented security in my db to prevent tampering) and if I hadn't already, thoroughly document the db design and functionality and hand that over as well. As of today, I've just continued to ignore the requests.

Portions of the db were developed at work, and my boss approved the time spent working on them. My boss has actually requested database modifications and additions over the years. I did a lot of the db design and modifications outside of work on my own PC and on my own time as well.

The justification is that if I leave, no one could support the system. There's no "Access expert" in our IT group. They have requested that I train one of the IT people on Access and walk them through my entire database. Of course, I have to do this in addition to my regular job, as no one will cover my regular responsibilities while I'm "training" my IT department.

What do you think? How would you handle this situation?


VBAinChicago

http://www.jjscomputing.com

For Fun -

http://www.321google.com

 

[Dollie]

So where does this leave us? Just whizzing into the wind, i.e. venting?

It could leave you:

1. In a position to talk to management about the issues in a way that they will understand (like you were talking to an 8 year old) so that development can progress professionally instead of being ego- and stress-driven;

2. In a position of resigned acceptance, ready to accept whatever fate may be cast your way; or

3. In search of a new job with a company that not only understands the importance of technology, but understands the importance of the development of that technology.

But then, I could be wrong....

 

[CajunCenturion]

==> But it does leave us with a problem: how do we as IT professionals help address legitimate pent up demand?

You don't.

The fact that you're not addressing this concerning is a big feeder to the pent up frustration with the IT staff. You will never get any support from the user-community if you ignore the problem, pretent the problem doesn't exist, or cop-out by saying it's management's problem. Like them or not (and often the 'not' is with good reason), the users are still our customers.

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[Glenn9999]

The fact that you're not addressing this concerning is a big feeder to the pent up frustration with the IT staff. You will never get any support from the user-community if you ignore the problem, pretent the problem doesn't exist, or cop-out by saying it's management's problem. Like them or not (and often the 'not' is with good reason), the users are still our customers.

Read my last post. What do you with with a "customer" making unreasonable demands? You definitely need management support for dealing with an unreasonable customer. All you can do is your best as the programmer, but if that's not good enough for your customer, who wants everything they ask for straight away, then it doesn't become your issue or problem to address. Especially if management gives you zero support in addressing it.

The first time these "customers" get put into place, the liability comes down on the programmers for complaining, not the users for being totally unrealistic and unreasonable.

 

[zeitghost]

Gosh.

I must have written some "Rogue IT" in my time...

And you're right, no-one could maintain it after I left,so that gave rise to more money in the bank... kerching!

A nice little earner while it lasted.

Pity the company itself was making more money out of selling land in Silicon Valley than it was out of making chips... bit of a wasting resource that.

 

[CajunCenturion]

==> What do you with with a "customer" making unreasonable demands? You definitely need management support for dealing with an unreasonable customer.

Actually, what you need, what we all need, and it is a huge area of need for many IT professionals, self included, is better people skills.

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[svanels]

==> What do you with a "customer" making unreasonable demands?

you say: yes boss

and the next day: I told you so

One day he will understand...

Steven

 

[dilettante]

I wonder how much of the problem comes from IT folk who reject high-productivity tools?

Instead of bemoaning the crappy applications and data islands users create using these tools we could use them ourselves more professionally. This way more needs might be met without creating those data islands, security problems, and unsupportable nightmares.

The snide remarks about RAD platforms and tools may be a symptom of the very problem we have.

DAD tools (Deliberate Application Development - Ok, I made it up) are often mistaken for "raw power" when from a develoment standpoint the opposite is true.

RAD is more the backhoe, while DAD can be more like using the little picks and brushes in archeological digs. An idiot in a backhoe can do a lot of damage. But digging a drainage ditch with dental tools is... inefficient? Costly at the very least.

Maybe a lot of IT people need to get down from their high horses. Some well-trained backhoe operators might go a long way here.

What may really be needed is a discipline for applying RAD tools. Something that produces quick ("good enough") results at low cost, with useful "tracks" left behind to promote support and maintenance, and an eye toward the enterprise implications of any project.

This probably can't be effective if the folks doing this work are relegated to some "ghetto." I hesitate to suggest duty rotation, but how else do you keep Mr. C++ and Ms. Oracle from getting too big a head to talk to Johnny FoxPro?


It's all sort of funny watching history recapitulate itself this way. In the mainframe world (yes, it still lives and breathes) the Assembler, PL/I, database folks love to lord it over the Cobol, RPG, Java people too.

Same story, different scale toys.

 

[Glenn9999]

Posted because I'm really interested in knowing what the solution would have been in my old place.

1. In a position to talk to management about the issues in a way that they will understand (like you were talking to an 8 year old) so that development can progress professionally instead of being ego- and stress-driven;

I think management largely knew and understood, but did nothing. My boss complained incessantly about the workload. So did my previous boss.

2. In a position of resigned acceptance, ready to accept whatever fate may be cast your way; or

There was the answer. And being part of this group, that was the only answer I was allowed...or #3.

3. In search of a new job with a company that not only understands the importance of technology, but understands the importance of the development of that technology.

And partly my problem now...there hasn't exactly been a new job to get.

And the issue is the solution wouldn't have been acceptable to the users in any way. The solutions as I see it with this problem I presented:

1) A one-year moratorium on any new development or minor changes until the workload is taken care of, then work taken based on the team leads perception of available programmers and time to do the work, and NOT on the users timetables.

2) Completely dropping all work requests and starting over as above.

Both would need management support and it wasn't coming.

 

[svanels]

Under the circumstances presented, it doesn't take an Einstein what will be the future of your IT Department.

Boss complaining, users complaining, rebelling staff, work not getting done, 1 year moratorium, employees dictating working hours.

Management doing nothing? Looks like the let the shit hit the fan strategy and clean the place.

And you still wonder why they are getting rid of IT?

Steven

 

[rexxhead]

There is a time to make things happen, and there is a time to let things happen.

Frank Clarke
Tampa Area REXX Programmers' Alliance
REXX Language Assn Listmaster

 

[Stevehewitt]

We had a slightly similar issue recently. I work as a IT Tech for our only remote site in a mid-sixed Finance company.
The office is new, and I'm the only IT chap onsite. Other techs and IS bods are at head office about 300 miles away.

As we're new, and the operations manager of the office was crap (been fired now) and didn't ask for any Crystal Reports to be written ASAP. Instead we plodded along with a spreadsheet (7 in total) and paper tally sheets for everyone to get our office MI. Took about 2 hours a day to do and went through 4 people.
I put in some development requests to IS for some Crystal Reports to be written that would give us the data that we need. However due to a huge lack of resouces I got told it could take about 3 months.
In the interm I spoke to the head of IS to see if he would mind if I developed a Access frontend (SQL db) so that whilst we still have 1 person entering data in manually; it's a lot quicker and we get our MI instantly. (Instead of taking 4 people a 2 hours a day).

He agreed, it worked and everyone was happy. I even got a company award for my work as it was outside of my day-to-day work and the users loved it.

Now we've scrapped it (apart from archviving) and use Crystal Reports. The head of IS spent 2 days with me in my office teaching me our MI schema and taught me the basics of Crystal 10 and SQL. I'm now a IT Tech for our office and a junior IS analyst with a little pay increase to reflect it.

I belive that if I just jumped in and wrote my Access app then the IS dept would do the same as what your IT guys have done. I documented the DB structure and told the IT/IS team where to find the FE source and basic troubleshooting.

Maybe you should have tried to integrate your app with your tech dept's rather than writting it without letting them know anything about it. Now they know about it they need control for the many reasons posted about.

Steve.

"They have the internet on computers now!" - Homer Simpson

 

[MikeLacey]

It's not about "fighting it", it's about doing what makes sense. I just don't get where they're coming from or how it benefits anyone.

In their position I would be very concerned and very keen to make sure that everything was under control.

Your systems are the backbone of the work that's done, and they don't know a thing about them or have any control of them. And it's their responsibility to understand and to have control of the IT systems within the company.

On the face of it you are in a strong position. You are the person who understands how everything in your work unit fits together and what it all does. You can probably achieve a great deal - would you like to work where you are now or in IT? - by cooperating, documenting, discussing.

The one thing that is guaranteed to damage your position is to be obstructive.

Mike

I am not inscrutable.

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[vfdowner]

Just some thoughts...

Let's not lose focus of the "system" that vbainchicago is talking about here. We aren't talking about trying to create a full-blown Warehouse or Inventory Management System here. I think that we are losing sight of what we are discussing. vbainchicago is looking at using an analytical tool, not an enterpise-level application.

Let me start by saying that the only good thing Access is for is a single-user thing. Like was pointed out, mother keeping recipes. You start getting into any multi-user situations there are a laundry list of problems with Access.

While Access is not what one would call truly multi-user, again we are not talking about some huge application. Access can handle multiple users, you can run into row locking issues because Access does not handle transactions well, and you cannot make object design modifications when other users are using the same instance of the front end, but that doesn't sound like it's been a problem here.

If you have exported the companies data along with the application you developed without their knowledge, it's a breech of contract and can be considered prosecutable theft.

Whoa there! There is nothing indicating that data is in leaving the confines of the company, so prosecutable theft is probably a stretch.

I also heard concerns that this was exposing company data to the world. If this were the case, I think we have a different IT problem in corporate network security. Not to mention that at no time was there an indication that this application accessed corporate data directly other than the data contained in resident tables (ODBC, ADO, etc.).

An excel spreadsheet is not the same thing as a 25 table database with all my company's data contained in it. It's just not the same thing and is a bad comparison to use.

An excel spreadsheet is actually a form of database. It is not of the relational variety like Access, but it is still a fair comparison. There is not a limitation on Excel data and I have witnessed many large workbooks that contain 25+ worksheets (comparable to Access tables). Also, It seems unlikely that you could store all company data within 25 tables in an Access database. Let's remember the scale we are dealing with here - Access is only capable of reaching 2 gigabytes of information, and Access does not manage space well, so 2 gig in Access is only comparable to about 150 meg in something like say SQL Server (depending on data types and other variables, of course).

I'm not sure the true size and structure of your organization, but the request for this to become and IT maintained and owned system seems unreasonable. There is a difference between an enterprise level application (where a traditional IT department would have domain) and user or even departmental desktop applications. Would an IT department be expected to maintain and own an excel spreadsheet that is widely used by your group because it has a complex formula that not all user levels could understand? Would IT have to own a Word document with a mail merge feature simply becuase not all people are familiar with the functionality?

Any organization that makes these tools available to employees must understand what they are giving to the users. These are Office Productivity applications. It is unreasonable to expect that an IT department would create, support, and maintain everything created in Access, Excel, Word, etc..

Now, as a courtesy to the IT staff, if your application pulls data from an enterprise level system they may own, it would be good to let them know what you are looking at doing, but if this is a 'self-contained' system there would be little need to involve IT.

I also have to agree with the posts on your backup strategy. It seems wiser to let this fall into the regular backup and recovery fold by having both the front-end and back-end on corporate servers.

This may all work out in your favor, though. You may be able to take this opportunity to lobby for a new department focused specifically on mid level applications like this. This is not that unusual in today's data-rich environment. Many companies have a need for people who can develop applications at a user level for the end user when IT requests take too long or IT resources are not available. This type of thing is becoming more prevalent in today's economy where comanies are struggling to keep up profits and lean business is coming back into focus. This is a real gap at a lot of companies - a gap between enterprise software/hardware/network IT guys and the end user who just wants Access to manage a small database for them.

Dan

 

[SteveGlo]

This is taken directly from my end of project report (edited to protect the innocent). The actual application is quite an important one to my organisation. It illustrates some of the problems described in the thread of letting users go there own way. It also illustrates some of the dangers of bending over backwards to accomodate a senior and domineering customer.

"I first became involved with this application in January 2005. Prior to then no one in (the IT department) had been involved in the commissioning or development of the application."

"In brief, an external consultancy, XXX Consulting, had been commissioned to develop the system.

Subsequently the customer decided to terminate the commissioning of XXX. At some stage another consultancy, YYY, was brought on board to finish the work that XXX had started."

The customer then decided to terminate YYY's involvement and bring the work in-house"

"Although the 2 consultancies seemed to think that an Excel spreadsheet would be the platform solution I decided against this for various reasons (not listed here) in favour of a VB front-end to a hierarchical MS-Access Database back-end."

"YYY had estimated that the remaining work would take 50 man days and this seemed about right given that the Customer would be available to explain the seemingly complex algorithms involved."

"The main reasons why the time taken to complete the work greatly exceeded the 50 man days estimate were:

Some of the underlying assumptions/algorithms in the prototype spreadsheet were in error. After a great deal of work was completed this was appreciated by the customer and he then had to derive the corrections and then I had to implement these

As the customer saw the VB/Database developmental prototype functioning he became aware of greater possibilities for increased application functionality and required these enhancements to the system.

When we entered the system testing / user testing phase it became apparent that differences in the results seen in the outputs of the spreadsheet and the application for the same inputs were a result of errors in the spreadsheet that had gone uncorrected."

"No formal project management method was adopted because of the customer’s rejection of any bureaucratic procedures which would in his opinion delay the implementation of the application even further."

Finally - the reason the customer originally went his own way was that our IT department had not been able to offer him the support he required at the time he needed it.

 

[philhege]

As someone on the IT side of the house, I was moved to poetry by experiences in this vein:

http://members.localnet.com/~philaine/DocketJingle.htm

 

[MikeLacey]

LOL - I like that Phil.

Mike

I am not inscrutable.

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