IT Manager's Handbook: Getting Your New Job Done (66 page)

Web-Based Training

Web-based training has exploded in recent years; “e-learning” is now a standard—not unusual—offering for many training needs. Web training can be a recorded session or it can be conducted live and interactive so that attendees can ask questions. Similarly, many vendors offer short videos on specific application functions, features, and tasks. There are many different varieties of Web training that you can customize to your particular staffing and budget needs, and there are many companies that now either develop their own Web-based training (because the tools are so easy to use) or have a company develop courses just for their needs.

User Education and Awareness

In addition to formal training about new solutions, you’ll also have to educate users about new policies, new features, changes in procedures, and so on. These can be accomplished through information communications like a newsletter or an in-house company portal. Keep in mind that when you are trying to change user behavior and habits, it will probably require repetition of the message. For example, since the user can be the weakest link for data security, it makes sense to have security become an ongoing theme as opposed to a one-time message.

10.2 The Consumerization of IT

Traditionally, IT has defined the direction, path, and strategy of the solutions that are to be used and deployed. However, that has dramatically changed as users have started to tell (if not demand) IT which devices and applications that they want to use. While this shift may have started a while ago as computers became a common device to find in the home, it became an issue that could not be ignored as smart phones became popular, particularly with the release of Apple’s first iPhone in 2007. Welcome to the consumerization of IT.

Consumerization of IT is a result of:

•
The increase in availability and choices of new technology solutions for the consumer, along with

•
The realization by these same consumers that these new products would not only be useful to them in their personal life, but in their corporate life as well.

On top of that, while most IT departments go through a lengthy process to evaluate and test technologies, invest in proper management and control, and analyze the ROI (return on investment), many consumers seem to be willing to be more flexible and to make technology purchases with a great less concern. As a result, it’s not uncommon for corporate employees to say that they have a better PC at home than they do in the office. This is probably a result of the powers-that-be (very often Finance and IT) deciding that the useful life of a workstation is 3 to 4 years, while an individual consumer may be perfectly willing to invest $500 to $1000 when they feel it’s time for a new PC at home.

As devices for the consumer became more and more functional, users began telling IT that they didn’t want to wait weeks for bureaucratic red tape to get a device that wasn’t nearly as useful as the device they could get today from the store down the street.

How to Deal with Consumerization

Unless you have a very rigid organization, with backing from the highest level of management, you’re unlikely to successfully stem the tide of the consumerization of IT in your company. Failure to recognize the issue is likely to result in users seeing your department as out-of-touch and they will just go around your group to get what they want. And, since many requests for consumer devices may be coming from your senior executives, it’s best to adopt a policy of flexibility. The following exchange may be apocryphal, but is probably familiar to some degree:

Help Desk Analyst:
Thank you for calling the Help Desk, how can I help you?

Executive Vice President:
I’m having difficulty setting up my iPhone to access company e-mail.

Help Desk Analyst:
We don’t support the iPhone.

Executive Vice President:
You do now.

While there are plenty of areas where IT needs to stand firm in its selections and policies, there are also areas where there is little risk with showing a little flexibility. Consider some of these areas:

•
Desktop devices.
While IT may have selected a specific vendor and model, is there really an issue if a user requests a slightly bigger screen?

•
Laptop devices.
Similar to desktop, but be sure that you’re offering a sufficient choice of models. While some users prefer a fully featured device, others may prefer a smaller, lighter model. If your vendor doesn’t offer a sufficient range of choices, or you’re not making them available to your users, you may want to rethink your position.

•
Software.
While IT plays a role in selecting, implementing, and supporting the large enterprise applications (messaging, finance, human resources, etc.) there are many individual users or departments that can benefit from small/inexpensive packages. Do you really mind if the sales reps use their own app to find the best deals on hotels when they travel?

Support Issues Associated with Consumerization and Handheld Devices

•
Accessories.
Sometimes a user will want a special keyboard (e.g., ergonomic, wireless), a trackball instead of a mouse, or a webcam. Even if you think the business justification is questionable, there is really little reason to turn down the request. As long as there is budget approval (devices like these are usually $100 or less), you have more to gain than to lose by taking care of requests like this.

•
Policies.
When it comes to formal corporate policies, they are often developed with very good intentions in mind and then never updated or reviewed. If you’re are turning down requests simply because “that’s what the policy says” then perhaps it may be time to take another look at those policies to see if they need to be updated to reflect the real world and how people actually work today.

•
Handheld devices (mobile phones and tablets).
Aside from the choice of devices you make available to your employees, it’s important to consider that many (if not most) of your employees may already have their own devices and all they want to do is connect to the corporate network so that they can be more productive by doing company work on their own time after hours. See
Chapter 11, Connectivity: Social Media, Handhelds, and More
on
page 287
for more on the support issues for phones and tablets.

There are a number of issues associated with support as consumerization grows:

Depth and Breadth of Support

With so many choices of these devices from different carriers, different manufacturers, and running different operating systems, it would be impossible for an IT department to be able to develop sufficient proficiency with them to provide support. However, you may have to wonder if many users are actually expecting the IT team to be proficient with them. Nowadays, most users are fairly self-sufficient about these devices. They know what functionality their devices have, and how to try and locate those functions themselves without having to call the Help Desk. They also go to the Web, their colleagues, and the carrier or manufacturer support lines for help. Some of them even turn to their teenage children when they have a question. So, the number of questions that may come to your team could be fairly limited. Of course, there are users that also expect and demand a much higher degree of attention, support, and hand-holding.

Security

Of course security is a major concern, especially with mobile devices. Initially this was a challenge because the devices were targeted to individual consumers, and the devices had little (if any) capability for management by the enterprise. This has begun to change as additional features that allow for greater enterprise integration have been included. Instead of saying a particular device is or isn’t secure, you can just define a set of requirements that devices must have to be allowed on your network. This might include features like the ability to remotely wipe the device, or for the device to have a password, among others.

Costs

The real expense of mobile devices is the recurring monthly plan costs. The upfront cost for the device is a pretty small portion of the total cost of ownership (TCO). (For a full discussion of TCO, see
Chapter 7, Getting Started with the Technical Environment
on
page 189
.) Therefore, when you look at a 12- or 24-month timeframe, the total cost differences between device X and device Y may not be that much. And if the employee wants to use their own device, there may not be any cost to the company.

Bring Your Own (BYO) Policies

Some companies have started to embrace a
Bring Your Own
(BYO) policy when it comes to certain technologies. With a BYO policy, employees bring their own technology products to work. This is most often done with mobile devices, but some organizations have also used the program for laptops. There are a number of variations of BYO. In some cases employees are reimbursed for a portion of the upfront costs, and/or the recurring fees. There are usually certain restrictions and provisions related to security, liability, company data, and so on. If you go down this path (and it seems like more and more companies are) there should be a number of departments engaged in setting up the policy, the guidelines, etc. These include IT, Human Resources, Finance and Risk Management, maybe even Legal. For more information about BYO, see section
“The Blurry Line between Company-Owned and Personally-Owned Equipment”
in
Chapter 11, Connectivity: Social Media, Handhelds, and More
on
page 288
.

10.3 When Your Users Are Part of a Mobile Work Force

Many users now spend some portion of their work day on a mobile device of some kind. That sounds commonplace, but it is actually a big shift in the way work gets done. It has large consequences for society as a whole, and for IT in particular.

As an IT Manager, here are some perceptions you will face:

•
It is not that hard to deal with information technology issues anymore, because everything is on much smaller and easier-to-use machines. (Those guys back in the mainframe days had it really rough—their computers were huge!)

•
How hard could it be to move stuff to where we can use it on our cell phone? All you have to do is cut and paste. Or download the app.

•
Why doesn’t the company help me with my broken phone? I bought it with my own money, but I read my company e-mail on it.

•
Not only are there security and support issues, there are “workplace sociology” issues.

In the past, it was only the traveling sales reps who carried your company’s valuable data outside your building—and you fought hard to prevent even that. Now everyone has a mobile phone and everyone carries all kinds of important data around.

Techniques for Supporting Your Mobile Users

Chapter 11, Connectivity: Social Media, Handhelds, and More
on
page 287
is dedicated to the general issues of mobility. But there are a number of ways to facilitate support when your users are not in the office:

•
Configure your e-mail client to allow users to read and write e-mail messages when not connected to the server.

•
Use features of the operating system, or system utilities, to synchronize files so that files on network drives can be replicated to laptops for accessing when offline.

•
Remote control capabilities (a feature of many desktop management suites) can ease the burden of trying to troubleshoot and solve a problem over the phone.

•
If you automatically deploy software, configure your deployment tool to deploy to workstations only when they are locally connected (especially if you are pushing out very large updates). Otherwise, for a user on a wireless connection in a hotel room, it could take hours and prevent her from doing her work.

•
When testing new tools, applications, features, and such, take into consideration how they will work for a user outside the office with limited or no connectivity. Consider first deploying these items to in-house users before deploying them to mobile users.

•
Be flexible about communication methods. Depending on their location and circumstances at the moment, it can be more convenient for mobile users to contact you by text message, e-mail, telephone, IM, etc. This also means there could be extended periods when you don’t hear back from the user. Be adaptable.

•
Keep a ready supply of accessories for traveling users: power cords, USB flash drives, power adapters for different countries, etc. Be prepared for frantic calls for these items right before a user is about to leave the office, and don’t expect the items to be returned to your inventory.

•
Be sure to provide ample communications to your users about downtime, maintenance activities, upgrades, etc., and keep in mind that your mobile users may be in very different time zones. You may even want to have communications that are tailored to the mobile workforce.

•
Mobile users often discover that small utilities or accessories can make their lives radically easier. Sometimes they hear about these while chatting at a conference, read about them in an airline magazine, or see the guy in the next seat using one. Be flexible in allowing them to use tools that are not on your approved standards list. See the section
“Being Flexible”
earlier in this chapter, as well as the section
“Standards”
in
Chapter 7, Getting Started with the Technical Environment
on
page 199
.