The Skeptical Informer 2013 #1: DIY IT

The IT Skeptic's Skeptical Informer newsletter for 10th January 2013.

Most on my mind this week is that TSO (the publishers of ITIL) sent a take-down letter to Lulu who publish my three-year-old book Owning ITIL®. Watch for the fireworks next week.

On a chirpier note, I had a discussion with Matthew Neigh of Cherwell on Google+ about how IT is showing up in airplanes and farms and everywhere else, and what the implications of that may be for support, based on his blog post on the topic.

I made the remark:

    You want flight attendants ****ing with the plane's computer systems while at 39,000 feet? I don't. they have standard procedures to resolve i.e. reboot. When that doesn't work they have standard procedure to report any faulty equipment on a flight, so the trained engineers fix it on the ground.

    The farmer's GPS is mission-critical to his business. He tries the troubleshooting page in the back of the manual. He maybe googles a bit. But if he has any sense at all the modern farmer calls out a technician.

    I don't fix my car. Why do we try to fix our PCs? And why do we have this weird perception that because we geeks have some small hope of sometimes fixing a PC without making it worse, that our users are gonna want to or be able to.

To which Matthew replied

    While I see your point Rob, I don't totally agree. My point was not that we should be getting rid of IT and do it ourselves.

    My point is (and I think I need to write another blog on it) that there is a shift happening. I don't know what it looks like and where it is going. I believe we live in a world where people need to (or want to be more) more tech savvy. I believe we live in a world where the younger generation is much more likely to try and figure it out on their own.

    This things impact IT and impact vendors like Cherwell. I don't know if this is good, bad or indifferent. I just call it as I see it.

and I said

    perhaps this latest is a more tech savvy generation. My generation built our own PCs from 8080 chips :) I remain skeptical (SURPRISE!!) that this latest generation is much more technically adept than mine, or any more inclined to fix things themselves. In fact I think they are possibly more spoilt, with a greater sense of entitlement, a shorter attention span, less ability to problem solve, and a lower level of initiative - but then old men have always thought that way :)

    As an enterprise I would want to have some control over my staff fixing IT, just as i would be concerned if they got the bonnet up on the company's vehicle fleet.

    yes we need channels that reach further into the community through which to communicate and better Level Zero support knowledgebases. We've aspired to those for a decade, nothing new. 

Matthew:

    You said that you remain skeptical (nice!) that this generation is more technically adept or inclined to fix things.

    And you are right...they are probably not. What they have is an unprecedented amount of information available to them...like never before.

    I am going to butcher +Chris Dancy in quoting him, so to paraphrase what he so often says, "Information cannot be contained"

Skep:

    It is not information that needs to be contained. it is people's behaviour when they use it, in particular what professionalism and responsibility they exhibit. We direct that through policy.

    Most of the information out there is dangerous, either because it is slightly wrong or because it is hopelessly wrong. the reason we have expert IT people is to manage the risk and extract the value on behalf of the organisation.
    E.g. see http://www.itskeptic.org/content/imagine-using-internet-knowledge

"Empowering the user" only undermines that. Most "empowerment" sounds to me more like the cries of entitlement from spoilt IT brats who don't want to be constrained by policy while they get paid.

Matthew:

    I won't argue with you that most knowledge is dangerous. I went and read your blog that you linked to. I agree wholeheartedly with most of it.

    My point is that there is a shift happening; whether we like it or agree with it is a different story. I don't agree with your line - "I think you are once again confusing your own personal experience with what works for business." (I admit I did not link through to that blog - I may have taken it out of context) I believe that personal and business are blurring. That was the whole point of my blog...personal and business is blurring...it is everywhere.

    What I didn't address is how we effectively deal with it. That I am still working on. I personally don't think policy alone will do the trick.

    A wise man (you) once wrote and let me read an eBook on "IT needs Better Parenting". There should be a follow up book called "The Business needs Better Parenting - how IT has failed the business like a bad parent" :)

Skep:

    What i mean about the confusion of personal and business is that we - those of us who participate in these communities - are a weird and tiny sect. We mix daily with people like ourselves, thereby distorting our world-view. http://www.itskeptic.org/cmdb-swiss-bank-account

    our world does not represent the world of the typical ITSM practitioner (there are way over a million maybe 2 million of them, how many do we talk to?) let alone the typical IT person let alone the typical non IT person e.g. a flight attendant or farmer.

    they don't think about this stuff. they don't learn. they don't tinker. they aren't aware. they haven't been bitten by s*** on the internet. they don't on average have our skills or ...ahem.. intelligence. they don't marvel at IT or love it. it is a part of their life like roads and electricity. They just want it to work and get out of their face. The last thing they want is to be fixing it.

So what do you think? How much is the world of support changing? Is there a shift in support due to IT showing up everywhere?


Related posts from the blog (don't forget to check out the comments! Always good):

Don't confuse your personal digital experience with business
Your personal experience of the worlds of technology toys, tech bling, and personal computing do not tell us about how the world of business will change in response to technology.

Imagine using the internet as knowledge
What a dumb idea; directing user search to internet videos to solve IT technical problems.



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