TABLE OF CONTENTS Many business units are heavily involved in the operations of their systems. A business unit typically has a person who does on the spot, initial diagnosis of problems and answering questions. Managers and employees are using the systems for production, analysis of production, and handling of other supporting processes. Since they use systems everyday, it is natural for them to take IT support for granted.
Problems emerge when there are needs for additional IT work. Here, there is often a lack of coordination and planning. Some examples of the problems are:
A business manager makes a request of IT without reviewing it with the employees. The IT manager may listen to the request and then treat it with high priority without a thorough investigation.
Employees find problems that they then relate to middle management. A middle level manager then makes direct contact with an IT programmer and asks for some action. The programmer then drops whatever he or she was working on.
What are the impacts of these situations? The response will likely not be immediate. This may turn off the users. Working on ad hoc business requests can destroy the productivity of IT. In one IT group, the IT work was tracked for 2 weeks in detail. It was discovered that over...
