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When you work in IT if you have a problem, someone has The Solution – for money. Ok there’s free/open source versions but a lot of times people want to pay cash. You don’t get fired for spending someone’s money in too many cases.
There’s always some new piece of software, new module, or new upgrade that’ll solve The Problem. I get this at home as a hobbyist and writer, and I get it at work. My friends who usually work in IT experience the same thing.
However there’s a problem with buying The Solution.
That new software tool or module that will solve The Problem also requires you to follow procedures, and enter data, and do things just a bit differently. Sure you can get customizations or do them yourselves, but usually The Solution to The Problem also adds The Work.
Which, you figure will pay off. Eventually. Yeah you have to track this and add that, but eventually it’ll be more efficient.
Except, then sometimes you add another Solution to another Problem and add more Work. So yeah, you just added a bit more of extra stuff to do, right? It’s worth it! You have The Solutions to the Problems!
Now zoom ahead a few years (or maybe a few months at some places) and you’ve purchased or expanded so many Solutions and added so much Work that you have a new Problem – all the extra Work added to solve the Problem in the first place. Hell, at that point you may have been better off with the Old Problem before you decided to solve things.
We’ve probably all been there when The Work to use The Solution becomes more important than actually solving whatever The Problem was. We may miss the old Problem. We understood The Problem.
Essentially companies and individuals have paid to get more overhead. I’m sure you’ve been there. You may be there now. You may be drinking because you’re there now. Stop that, it’s bad for you.
I think this is because fixing a Problem is hard and requires effort and argument. Making changes needs effort and arguments. The temptation to buy a Solution is both fast and might seem easier at the time. It’s kind of like the old “no one got fired for buying IBM,” whereas the challenges of overhauling The Problem means you have to ask how you got there.
Sometimes I think we need a new wave of minimalism in IT. How can we do more with less? What do we really need to do? How can we scale back to find what we really need to do at a reasonable price?
Because I’m finding that a lot of Solutions just create a new Problem – more Work.
Steven Savage