scott mcnitt (6/13/2013)

---

Jim P. (6/13/2013)

---

David.Poole (6/13/2013)

---

Anyone starting today would be shocked by what their predecessors had to to to fight with the early versions of MFC. The sheer amount of code that was necessary to produce a simple Windows form was shocking. Today its drag and drop, set a few properties and fill in the bit that actually delivers value to the business. Back then it was work out how to get windows to resize and redraw correctly, controls to respond to events.

And I have lost count how many times I've had to essentially rebuild an Access DB for some department that went ahead and used the form wizards and macros to build their database. They only came to IT when it started so acting up and slowing down.

Then you find there is no normalization and the auto-generated code is just a huge waste of time.

But the answer should not be to take away the ability of the Business to create its own technical solutions (prevent them from creating MS Access databases) but rather to prevent them from creating mission critical solutions under the radar with no long-term plan to move them "into the fold".

I think the point of this Editorial and the article from Infoworld is that the Business needs to get things done and sometimes their need for a solution does not fit into the traditional IT solution process. It realizes that each need fits on a continuum from "Slow but Sure" for IT to "Seat of the Pants" for non-IT.

Sometimes it needs to be done NOW (create this report for the customer by tomorrow or lose the contract) and the scope and risk are such that a quick solution in MS Access is a good fit...for now.

I don't think traditional IT will completely go away but the companies that do not embrace the issue of Shadow IT may find themselves out of business.