IT needs to support innovation and finding better ways to do things, not defend the status quo
Let’s get this out of the way first. I’ve been on both sides of the IT desk. I might sit in marketing at the moment, but I am, and always will be, a techie. So when I talk about shadow IT, you need to understand I’ve done it(and still do). I’ve done shadow IT to get things done in marketing, heck I’ve done shadow IT within IT. And since I’ve been there so many times, I can tell you without hesitation that the number one reason shadow IT exists is that IT isn’t doing its job.
The Point Haired Boss isn’t actually the problem
This post in The Register: Your pointy-haired boss ‘bought a cloud’ with his credit card. Now what?—?Shadow IT: Pray he didn’t link the… oh for @£$%^& really pissed me off because it completely missed the point why business users go around IT to get things done and managed to insult them at the same time. Insult? Yeah…
Now I’m going to sidestep the legal issues of this and focus on the practical. The PHB is exfiltrating and manipulating this data outside of the purview of IT for a reason. They are seeking to accomplish something. The problem is that they very likely don’t have the skills or experience required to accomplish that something on their own.
This means that the results of whatever they are doing are likely to be inaccurate. Worse, shadow IT rarely stays confined to a single service. Inappropriate or inaccurate handling of inputs can corrupt an entire chain of data, resulting in the business building and relying upon business processes and IT services that don’t do what they’re supposed to do, in large part because IT wasn’t involved in the first place to do the relevant integration and quality control.
Don’t have the skills or experience to accomplish something on our own? Are you kidding me? When the business people I know kludge a bunch of things together on their own they are doing it because they aren’t getting the data and info they need. We know when data is crap. We know when it’s wrong. We’re smart people, so saying what we’re doing might be inaccurate is pretty insulting. If you know what kind of data you need to make a decision, you’re not going to build something that doesn’t give you the data you’re looking for.
I parse, toss, cull, filter, and manipulate data all the freakin’ time so I can get my job done. Does this data get re-imported into the CRM? Sometimes. Am I careful about it? Well, duh, because I also rely on the data in the CRM to do my job. I’m not going to dump Kool Aid into the well just because I want one fruity drink.
IT needs to innovate and keep the lights on
Fine, the primary job for any IT department is to keep the lights on. Cool. That’s essential stuff. That can’t stop. However, what is equally important is for IT departments to be looking ahead at what’s next, what’s better, what we’re living with that just doesn’t cut it and then do something about it. When I needed to stay in contact with my web vendors while I was in IT I snuck Yahoo Messenger into the company. Why? Because that’s what I needed to get the job done. I didn’t stop there. I got the servers I needed. I brought machines (gasp Macs!) in and used a lot of non-standard tools. Because I needed them to do my job. And I didn’t stop looking for better and better ways to do things.
I’m sure you could think of a hundred ways you’ve done this at work. Brought your Mac in because the best app for your job is Mac only? Put a server under your desk as a sandbox to experiment? Technology moves too fast for innovation to take a back seat. Business needs to innovate. The people who are doing the stuff that will make a difference also tend to be the people who aren’t satisfied with the status quo and who will naturally tinker and experiment. Those are the people who really find the cool stuff and play with it. Have you played with Zapier or IFTTT? There are a ton of great things you can build there. I build a marketing automation tool (imperfect as it was) connecting our SQL DB to Mailchimp (and Slack just for kicks). It was simple and crude, but it worked. That’s taking a problem and solving it.
Oh and I knew when it wasn’t working or borked or giving crappy data.
When IT feels its main job is only to maintain systems and not innovate, someone else is going to do it for them. Sharing big files with vendors a problem? Fine we’ll share over Dropbox (done that). Not able to get a website launched without a bunch of IT red tape to get a new server, etc? Fine I’ll go to one of a hundred providers to get hosting and build it myself (done that too). Tools like Basecamp, Slack, heck even Salesforce when it started out, were attractive to business users because they are easy to start up, inexpensive to start using, and pretty darn easy to use. And they get the job done.
Risks? Tons.
Shadow IT has tons of risks. Insecure file sharing. Flaky apps. Just plain dangerous apps. Funny thing is that the risks have always been there, but shadow IT has kept going. The folks who wonder if there is a better way will keep wondering and keep trying new things and keep downloading. In order to mitigate the risk you need to help people learn what is epically stupid and what is worth a little risk. P2P file sharing from inside the company to outside? Really stupid. Web based project management and group chat? Worth the risk.
Excuse me while I try this new thing
The reality is that no IT system is perfect and in order to make it better is to push it. The only way to find better ways to get work done is to try new and interesting ideas. Want to help people share research? Try OneNote or Evernote or something… Sick of email? Try chat. Project management? Basecamp. There are options and things to experiment with solve a problem, be that process or data, and no matter what IT says, people will keep trying. Sure the cloud is cheap and easy for people to start using, and maybe there are more than a few people who shouldn’t be trying this stuff on their own. However, after over 20 years being the guy to kludges, tinkers, sometimes breaks, and finds new technology that makes work easier, most of the people I know doing this know what they are doing and why.
We’re the crazy ones. We think different. And we’ll be damned if we let IT get in the way of us doing our jobs.
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