Power: Backspin

Error 404--Not Found

From RFC 2068 Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1:

10.4.5 404 Not Found

The server has not found anything matching the Request-URI. No indication is given of whether the condition is temporary or permanent.

If the server does not wish to make this information available to the client, the status code 403 (Forbidden) can be used instead. The 410 (Gone) status code SHOULD be used if the server knows, through some internally configurable mechanism, that an old resource is permanently unavailable and has no forwarding address.

Error 404--Not Found

From RFC 2068 Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1:

10.4.5 404 Not Found

The server has not found anything matching the Request-URI. No indication is given of whether the condition is temporary or permanent.

By Mark Gibbs
Network World, 1/4/99

Power is tricky stuff; first you have it, then you don't.

Remember when users knew their place? You gave them names and passwords, pointed them at their designated "green screens" and ignored them as much as possible. You weren't particularly nice to them because you didn't have to be. You were a god of processing, and they were mere mortals. You were the keeper of a corporate strategic resource, and they were just cogs in the machine. You had power.

Ah, but how things have changed in just a few short years. Now your job security and the IT budget are directly related to how happy your users are. There are no more opportunities to sneer, "You want what?" Nope, today it is all talk of "empowerment," "user satisfaction," and "internal service objectives."

Let me illustrate the way your relationship with your users has changed:

Old response: You want it when (ha, ha, ha)?

New response: Will tomorrow be soon enough?

Old response: We'll get around to it.

New response: Will tomorrow be soon enough?

Old response: We haven't got the resources for that.

New response: Will tomorrow be soon enough?

Actually, it was inevitable that you would lose your power. As computers and networks became ubiquitous in the marketplace and your company, they also became less special and more like commodities. While this gave you more career opportunities, your rare skills became much less rare and, as you've probably noticed, you became a commodity yourself. An expensive one, it must be said, but replaceable nonetheless.

The power you used to have over corporate computing was more-or-less absolute because you completely controlled the computing resources. You had a corporate-level responsibility to run one or two specific business systems, such as billing and payroll. You were, in effect, process-oriented - you actually ran the system.

Now the corporate strategic resource - the IT architecture you agonizingly built over the course of a decade or more - is still strategic but not in the way it used to be. Rather than implementing just one or two key business processes, you are now in charge of an architecture that has become so much a part of the company that it underpins the organization.

The result of this commoditization and change in architecture is that you and your computer systems have become service-oriented. You still provide support for processes, such as accounting, but you no longer own the processes. They are owned by other parts of the organization, and you just run them. It is similar to starting as the train driver and finding that you have become the guy shoveling the coal.

So how can you regain some respect? How can you engineer it so that the organization understands your special value?

First, provide superlative service. This is often treated as obvious advice ("yeah, yeah, we know that"), yet we still hear endless end-user complaints about slow service. I know it's hard - you have hardly enough staff to keep the network running - but it's not like you have a choice. Either satisfy your users or they'll get rid of you and find someone who, given the same resources, can.

Second, tell the organization what you do. But when you tell management or the end users, don't give them a technical presentation, give them a value pitch. Don't tell them about bits and bytes, tell them what they get for their money and what they'll get if they give you more money. And be excited about it.

Third, be proactive. Watch out for gadgets and tools that add "cool" to end user's computing environments. Yeah, I know that makes more work for you. But remember that the more they like and are amused by what you give them, the more they'll value your services and like you. The more they like you, the more power you will find you have.

The days when users knew their place, and the IT group had all the power are far behind us. The issue for IT groups today is simple: "Do you know your place?"