Bad Applications Forced On IT Staff
from the executive-decisions dept
I'm sure this won't come as a surprise to many folks, but many IT staffers feel that they're being asked to install applications that suffer from serious quality problems, but which are still forced on them by management. Many of these resulted in some sort of application failure which harmed productivity and caused financial losses. Everyone's dealt with these sorts of situations where some exec decides that the company "needs" to have currently hyped widget A, when the current system is working just fine. Even worse, of course, is when the executive is buddies with (or relatives!) with someone at company B that develops widget A. It's the same old story. Technology is great for productivity - when implemented properly. Unfortunately, too many folks skip that last part and are just looking for the ability to say, "well, of course, we're a widget A shop" without caring about how they use widget A or if they really need widget A.
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cruddy software
Windows comes to mind as a prime example.
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Re: cruddy software
The only comfort is that at least they PAY for the mediocrity (not just license fees, but reduced control, and lowered productivity).
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This was standard procedure once the small niche software company I used to work for was acquired. The CEO and VPs were all replaced by sales sharks from the US and the overwhelming directives from on high to the sales staff were (these were in many many memos):
(note that the average annual contract price until then was 15000$)
1 - if the contract is less than 500000$ you don't return calls...ever
2 - never EVER make a sale to the IT staff..EVER. Talk to someone higher.
3 - promise whatever feature you need to and get the sale, our tech support department will handle the rest and we'll plan it for the next upgrade.
(Being in tech support at the time, I LOVED this one...)
Needless to say, the company is out of business now, the CEO took it to its IPO, cashed in his options, made a few million and left.
As long as slimy practices like this continue, the IT climate vis-a-vis crappy software won't change.
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