Does the computer experience have to be awful in the workplace?

Its been a few years now that people have been talking about “consumerisation”, which is the idea that you can want and expect the same kind of computing experiences at work as you get at home.

But, as everyone who works in a large company knows, you never get such an experience at work. Everything is a few versions behind, and even when it’s up to date, it all works so slowly. This, in part, is because of all the management, and security, and monitoring, and stuff that IT people feel they have to do to protect their assets.

What are the key changes IT organisations would have to make if they really wanted to deliver a decent consumer computing experience?

1. They’d need to stop imagining that their staff are stupid. I’m always so surprised when I go into meetings and discover the IT people somehow believe that staff forget how to use the web, Google, and standard productivity tools the moment they walk in the door. Is there an idiot-line drawn on the floor by the entrance, and your IQ drops as you cross it? I don’t think so.

2. IT organisations need to stop thinking that the lowest common denominator is the place to aim their technological aspirations. It may be the case that a small minority of staff can’t progress beyond the green-screen, but frankly that’s not a good enough reason to lose the benefits of the modern stuff.

3. IT managers need to accept they don’t have to control everything. It isn’t, for example, necessary to lock down computers to the degree where you can’t even access the screensaver. Why do we do that stuff anyway? Because we think it reduces our support costs and increases reliability. All it does really is make sure that you have to call the helpdesk for everything, even if you know how to fix a problem yourself.

4. IT can’t only be about cost. I am so exhausted by the amount of effort we go to reduce cost. I mean, I’m not advocating that everyone should just go and spend anything they like on shiny gadgets, but really, this laser sharp focus on cost containment prevents you from moving things forward at a decent pace. IT is an asset, a strategic enabler. Do you ask a starving athlete to run faster and longer with less food? Not really.

5. Standardisation may make things easier to manage, but it is also a way to shackle your best people to the lowest common denominator. I suppose that’s OK if you work in an organisation where keeping talent isn’t a key differentiator.  But I don’t know many organisations that have that view and keep on living long.

6. IT needs to give up on the idea that the most important thing is reliability, scalability and security. Those are important things. But if you want a decent computing experience, they are secondary to making the job at hand as easy as possible. Secondary. Our IT experiences are terrible at work because we’ve all forgotten this.

7. People are on their computer for at least a third of their day. I, personally, am on mine for 12 hours a day. I therefore cannot tolerate shoddy equipment that doesn’t do exactly what I need perfectly all the time. When you have to deal with little frustrations 100 times a day, they’re not little any more. They become big and central parts of your life. Personally, I don’t need technological niggles to be the thing I talk about when I finally get off the computer. Dinner conversation: “yes, I made two cups of tea whilst waiting to boot this morning. Then I made two more at lunchtime when the net was slow. And then I had another one waiting to log out. So don’t bother to offer me more tea with desert”.

8. Internet access is not a privilege. Social network access is not something that will suck up otherwise productive work time. Doing social media is not only a home-time activity. Wake up.

Actually, I could keep on going here for ages, but I think you get the point. Those of us who are IT leaders really need to move where the rest of the world is already, and create great computing experiences for staff. The time is coming where they’ll demand great experiences or they’ll leave. I know lots of traditionalists don’t believe that, but have a chat with the fresh talent and see what they think.

Frankly, things have moved. It isn’t about the IT folk and what makes it easy and cheap for us to manage the IT asset any more.

Comments

[Simonster]

I'm pretty sure you're reading my mind.

To elaborate on your closing though...I actually think that this approach will reduce cost in the long run.

A more tech savvy workforce brings benefits in the reduced needs for support and the more the enterprise moves to the consumer model the more it becomes so. I'd already seriously question why purchasing need to be involved in end user kit negotiations. How much happier would the workforce be to get £500 to go buy their own PC at PC World et al. ? Some would hate it, lots would revel and if you stay over 3 years then the kit is yours...

I believe it will get easy and cheap through mass market and education.

[Pete_v]

I think my (large, corporate) workplace might already be some way down this road. Getting your hands on hardware is still managed quite traditionally (and is not at all easy in the current climate) but once over that hurdle it's all pretty good. My laptop runs Ubuntu Linux, which I've opted to lightly customise via an internal company repository to get tools like Lotus Notes. In the administrative sense I own the machine absolutely, Internet access is assumed, and there are a plethora of tools available on the Intranet. Some good, some bad, but with a couple of exceptions nobody's forcing me to use them; I pick what helps me do my job.

Apart from the fact that I have to use my second-choice OS (I'd rather use MacOS, but that needs hardware I can't get at work) there's not a great deal of difference between my home computing experience and my work one. I wouldn't want to work somewhere where there was, and this *is* something I would ask about in a job interview.

If my company can do it, why are others so convinced that they can't?

[Sam Adams]

Interesting how you slam your IT department - perhaps it's time you fire your IT leadership?

In my experience, it's typically a combination of vendors and business leaders that hold back Enterprise IT. It's possible, although rare, that IT has that much sway, but if they do, they're part of the problem.

Invariably, however, it tends to be a lack of strategy and vision from the business that leads to poor IT.

[James Gardner]

Did I slam my own IT department and leadership (which I am part of)? I hope not, it was not my intention. I will say the department, like all large organisations has some challenges when it comes to modernising its IT estate, not unlike those of any other organisation. I certainly hope that my team and I are part of the solution, and not the inherent problem.

[Mark Toomey]

James, this post provides a perfect context for illustrating the use of ISO 38500’s principles.

Responsibility: Allocate an appropriate amount of responsibility to the end users for decisions about what IT resources they use.

Strategy (Planning): Instead of banning use of web based resources, find ways to exploit them to improve the business. At the same time provide relevant, useful and appropriately pitched information to help users make appropriate decisions within their responsibility allocation.

Acquisition (Spending): Before locking anything down, carefully evaluate the total cost including potential lost productivity against the cost of the alternative – repairing the consequences of poor choices made by people. The results may surprise. At the same time seek to understand the resources that are in-demand so that optimal buying strategies can be employed.

Performance: Properly understand the skill and ability of users and provide appropriate support. Complement freedom with appropriate safeguards. Provide suitable information resources and training to build skills and improve end-user decision making.

Conformance: Define clear and relevant rules regarding use of resources, allocation of responsibility and so on. Avoid unnecessary rules that detract from performance and flexibility, and enforce the necessary rules firmly.

Human behaviour: Understand how human performance is enhanced by respect and freedom, and degraded by inconvenience and stress. Configure IT services, resources and rules accordingly to maximise human performance.

For a comprehensive discussion of the ISO 38500 principles, see my book, Waltzing with the Elephant at http//www.infonomics.com.au.

Cheers
Mark

[Neil Robinson]

James, its so good to see that despite you occupying a lofty position in technology management that you still see things from the user's point of view.

That's a powerful vantage point to have and one that gives me confidence that you may actually achieve something in your sector where so many have failed and succumbed to the lure of the Royal Shilling.

That said, I need to query one issue of semantics. I believe you're wrong to define "consumerisation" in the way you have.

Consumerisation is a stage of the technology adoption process where new stuff moves from being expert or service driven into a commoditised, user driven product.

Think, video recorders becoming easy to use and moving from studio to the home and mainframes giving way to PCs.

What you seem to be describing is something different. "Why is it so easy to do things at home and so difficult to do things at work?"

Framed like that, the argument becomes much more obvious. I see the primary reason being service provider protectionism. I have my empire, my staff and my salary. You sit there, I sit here.

Factor in fear of the unknown, resistance to change and an unhealthy propensity for anyone in charge of corporate technology to say no - a position diametrically opposed to society's natural tendency to say yes - and no wonder we have an us and them stand-off existing between the business and IT.

Remember how difficult it was a few years ago to get a company mobile phone or Blackberry?

There's a saying that goes technology starts off a joke, becomes a threat and then becomes obvious.

Perhaps the frustration you feel is that you have the "obvious" at home - your iPhone, Mac, easy life, all delivered at consumer cost. At work you have inflexible communications, clumsy, slow PCs all delivered at high cost.

What you know to be obvious still represents a a threat in the workplace.

I do feel that cost needs to be driven out of corporate technology. But when you start to dig deep to root that out, you'll have some unpopular decisions to make.

Knocking down the Berlin wall was easy when those who built (and maintained it) were prepared to let you do it.

So be careful. Feel the force, Luke. But look what's happening with BA...

[Thomas Barker]

IT people are heavily out-numbered by users, say 150:1.

If you give users more rope, 24% will improve their environment, 70% won't change anything, 5% will break something, accept the blame and fix it themselves, 1% will break something and blame you.

You do not need to increase the number of breakages significantly to tie down an entire department :-S

(Plus most users expect training when s/ware is upgraded. That's significantly more expensive than the s/ware itself. That's why you're still on Office 6.)

Now if people signed formal waivers surrendering all their rights to support, and then brought in their MacBooks ... ;-)

[James Gardner]

I think I do see things from a user's point of view, especially as I am still a user myself. But I take your points on consumerisation, though I think its more about "service protection" than "service protectionism". Most of the people I meet up with don't have big agendas and big empires. They just want to do a good job, which includes making sure that the tech works. It seems the easiest way to do that is standardise and regularise, even if that means everyone gets a worse experience.

[Stephen]

The delivery of very large-scale centrally managed systems by necessity has to take into consideration ‘non-functional requirements’ such as security, availability, scalability etc e.g. all the ‘ity’ type words.

Non-functional requirements should be transparent to the end user e.g. in that they should happen and be fully catered for, but should not impinge on or detract from the end user experience.

Perhaps as we technical people implement technical changes to satisfy ‘non-functional’ requirements, changes could also be validated as part of some form of end user experience test?

The 'usability' and human productivity elements of IT delivered solutions is an area that deserves allot more attention.

[Matt Briggs]

Hear hear - as a non techie and a "user" I find this quite refreshing. It appears to me though that is not a technology issue at all but a cultural one where organisations need leaders with the accountability to take risks; managers to trust staff and to challenge bad behaviour when they misplace that trust; processes that allow the user (me) to personalise their activity; central functions to remove governance activity that work on the principle of supporting change rather than managing down risk. If these do not all align themselves then the same challenges will persist.

[Mark]

I whole heartedly agree, 'staff' are not stupid and their input is the only way in my opinion to build useable IT that works for the business. I have spent far too many year in the past building IT to a set of paper requirement that have been formed by “experts analysts” only to find the real user of the system hate it or wish it ‘could just do this’..
However I have had two opportunities to work in a far more organic/evolutionary way, in a real office with the real staff doing the job. Building the IT solution day by day with them running it for real, flagging up its weaknesses , fixing them straight away, with no long change requests process , and releasing a new version the next day until the fittest solution emerges.
“Out of chaos comes order”  to coin a phrase...
The ideas of staff doing the job is invaluable and I am one who believes as IT people we forget that someone may know more than us when it comes to system design, when the ultimate system is for them....
However the BIG business I work for, same as you James , with all the process, controls and governance heavily resist this approach as to risky, but surely it’s more risky to undermine the performance and moral of the staff by constantly giving them solutions they don’t, like, need or want and forcing them to use them....