I think that most software doesn’t help people using it, and a lot of current GUI design is based upon conventions that once people know, they use, but this is basic mechanics. The web browswer was an excellent example of a software tool that is incredibly usable, because it feels “natural” to use. Learning time for me was basic compentency in seconds, mastery over a course of a few trials. Typical office software, some of the more user friendly software out there is much harder to learn how to use.

Typical enterprise software is even worse. It isn’t obvious to people, it tends to be bloated, pulling in duplicate functions that other software can also do, but cannot because of artificial boundaries between data and systems. Things that people find useful: e-mail, world wide web, chat, blogs, wikis – are simple, single purpose applications that most computer literate people know how to use.

Sorry.
John-

Often the instinct to control and restrict is not merely an IT phenonmena, many times in an organization two groups will unite (say Marketing and IT) in order to deepen the control and restriction.

My team undertook a project to create a community site for our product that allowed us to communicate with our customers, our customers to communicate with each other and opened access to everything we were doing. Its quite a successful product and this portal has been amazingly well received and was implemented in a matter of weeks rather then months or years, is self-maintaining for the most part and creates a critical mass that I see throughout our global customer base as I travel around to evangelize and meet with customers and partners. This was done outside of the IT/Marketing organizations as our customers were DEMANDING openness and we wanted to provide it. You can’t argue with success and our philosophy was that we would be rogue, allow our community to make it a success and thus give it a lease on life. This is exactly what happened.

The Marketing/IT response? That its a great stopgap move but they are working on the new sales portal (based on SAP and currently 1.5 years behind schedule) that will enable partners to login and see relevant marketing content. That this new portal will be the most fantastic thing ever and consume all other content and community sites. When it gets here and the budget is allocated. In the meanwhile planning for the eventual arrival of budget and delivery has been ongoing for over a year.

They miss the c0ncept from the cocoon of information ownership and misperception of what value really is as defined in your posting. This portal will fail for all of the reasons we are familiar with.

So therein lies the trap, with this eventual failure comes an instinct on their side to board our vessel and ride out the storm. The spirit of openness and sharing dictates that we allow them to board, shower them with hospitality and teach them our way.

But their directive is to board, control and restrict. In fact they are already doing this, using their Silo based control over content to enforce ‘standards’ and complaining about random buzzwords, buzzwords that compel the Marketing and IT juggernauts to move into ‘panic restriction mode’.

After thinking long and hard I’ve decided to let them come aboard and have confidence that my shipmates can whether the chaos that these new guests bring along, also safe in knowing that for us another ship is always easy to be had and taking solace in the fact that the ship does not represent our knowledge and thus that information does -not- go down with the ship.

http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-Mff23hgidqmHGqbcv.lfskakEtS6qLVHUEMFUG4-?cq=1&p=98

Let me know if you want to be one of my Yahoo! 360 “Friends;” so you can track the story as it evolves! (Other members of this community are free to ask, too!)

Dennis, you know exactly what I mean :-) I would only add a small proviso:

“make it SEEM to be big, impenetrable, etc etc”.

It doesn’t HAVE to be any of those things. That way we all win :-)

You forgot one thing JP – hyperblowy PowerPoint demo by sharp suited sales team where expectations are set in the stratosphere.

That explains the success of certain ERP vendors don’t you think?

Rory

JP,
I agree with your list of enterprise perception triggers. There may be a meta-reason that connects all of the above – empire-building.

IT depts are frequently out to protect next year’s budgets and the above perception-triggers help them to do that. And also to create a perhaps-false sense of security about the IT dept’s utility to the org.

Let’s face it, if you lightweight, almost anybody can set up basic enterprise IT requirements.

It’s easy to organise a secure Linux or mixed Lin/WIN Lan, and use only free office-ware and Mozilla/ T-Bird etc. There is very little pain of adoption, negligible cost and little need for licensing. Your broadband service provider and webhost etc, will help you configure the messier bits of the system and if you push for it, you can easily outsource maintenance.

But then, where is the raison d’etre for the IT dept?

It may not be articulated but this will be a significant barrier I suspect to enterprise lightweighting.

In a lightweighted environment, the IT dept has to carve out a new role and reluctance to do that is perhaps where the rub may lie.

In a different way, I’ve come across corporations, which have replaced the internal e-mail system, by and large with a twiki.

This seems to work brilliantly whereever I’ve seen it in operation -it cuts down on the garbage ccs while ensuring that everyone is in the loop and contributing, strategising, etc, on key projects.

But the concept of an office Twiki causes shock and horror in a paranoid enterprise because a paranoid office tends to ratchet up the fear factor by working through selective e-mail lists.

So, it is resisted strongly by the senior (non-IT) executive in the classic Indian workplace because limiting others’ access to information (and to Sethji) is considered a key factor for advancement.

The perception problem is caused precisely by the fact that its an open, transparent system and enterprises are by definition, not.

There. that’s my two-paise (hilarious given that I’ve been unemployed for 10 years!).

Devangshu

On the other hand, if you abstract it to the right level, the biggest IT vendor in the world, probably by orders of magnitude, is the in-house IT department.

So you have degrees of vendor and supply chain participant and “strategic partner” and outsourcer and bodyshopper and agency and all that jazz.

The behaviours I characterised are based on a quarter of a century of watching enterprise decision-making in action, not from a vendor perspective. Though I must admit I have seen many enterprises where this decision-making is actually carried out by the dominant vendor and bypasses the “IT department”. But these are less common now.

I’m not so sure about your analysis of the pain of acquisition. I think it is a function of how change happens in an environment, the pushback is from people who resist changing the processes.

And that creates one of the worst nightmares possible in enterprise software. Where you buy an off-the-shelf (-ish, anyway) product and then mangle it beyond recognition during the implementation process. What you land up with is neither fish nor fowl. It does not have the economies of scale of being an external cookie-cutter, and it does not have the deep domain knowledge and (hoped-for) lower maintenance costs of the in-house development.

This tension between build and buy used to be fun to watch, and even made economic sense occasionally. Now what we tend to have is illegitimate offspring from that coming together.