Gary Varga (6/14/2013)
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.
Departments developing their own poor (technically) but useful (business-wise) solutions is the ultimate in agility and prototyping. I just wish that they would recognise to call in their IT departments when it starts to become a problem as opposed to waiting until it no longer is viable and need the replacement from the IT department immediately.
And thus give rise to the fitting moniker Shadow IT.
The IT departments that do not exist in 5 years may be at companies that go out of business because the entire Business relied on one undocumented Excel macro and nobody has the source code.
Ban all Excel macros and Access databases you say? You later find that the Business has requested a "report" that dumps all the data for two tables which then became the input to a cloud app that supports your biggest customer.
To empathise with the Business folks, think of Harry Tuttle from Brazil. Getting centralized IT to help you with your technology solution makes you want to "go rougue".