The Adventures of an IT Leader, Updated Edition with a New Preface by the Authors

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

STANDARDIZATION

Tuesday, December 11, 2:18 PM . . .

It was infrastructure standardization policy day at IVK. Barton sat listening to proposals by Bernie Ruben’s staff for how the IT department should act against the proliferating complexity of IVK’s IT environment, the overabundance of software, hardware, and services in different versions and brands. Business managers at IVK had grown accustomed to making their own decisions about what business systems, tools, and services to acquire. When they saw something they liked and decided they wanted it, they often bought it if they had budget for it. Sometimes they bought without any input from the IT department, then turned around and expected IT to install and support whatever it ...