IT Manager & Excel

[Cbrine]

Well to be fair, we only remember the screw up's. When everything running smoothly we never really remeber that. We have an IT support group that consists of only 4 people. One of which I would trust to know more then me, one of which knows a good amount and for the most part I would trust him. The other two, I wouldn't let near my system, with somebody else's brain. It seems most of the competant IT guy's have moved on to bigger and better things, like project management and programming. Which I guess makes sense, even if it doesn't help me!!!

 

[starl]

we only remember the screw up's. When everything running smoothly we never really remeber that

but if the IT dept is competent and sets things up properly, shouldn't we expect things to run smoothly, with only the occ. bump in the road? I guess I wasn't too fair about my last company's IT. The servers ran somewhat well (except the mail..). We had a local IT guy to reboot the PC server and usually maintained the Unix CAD server ourselves.. but when it came to software problems - outlook, word anything other than servers.. I guess my problem with them was the high and mighty attitude - since I wasn't in IT, I didn't know what I was talking about.. except one guy - I considered him REAL IT - helpful, non-condescending. Too bad he wasn't a people person and preferred the background... The IT dept would be flawless if he were in charge..
now my husband's company - the don't do ANYTHING right!

 

[mark007]

Yeah, that's the issue that annoyed me. The fact they like to think themselves almighty. If you show them you know what you're talking about they get all cagey and annoyed!

Our IT department was located centrally and all problems dealt with using NetSupport to logon to PC's remotely or over the phone.

The biggest issues I had with them were:

1. "We'll call you back in an hour" meaning we won't call you back and may or may not fix it.
2. Being told to do the obvious that you'd already tried 5 times depsite telling them this.
3. The internet/email going down on an almost daily basis.
4. Watching them take control of my PC and try several things before hitting on the solution I told them 10 minutes ago.

The central company pulled out of our branch a few months ago and since then I've been the IT department. The internet works everyday, no one has trouble with email and the server hasn't crashed once. I wouldn't consider myself a network expert by any means but I don't see why it's so hard for things to work on a regular basis!

 

[XL-Dennis]

The central company pulled out of our branch a few months ago and since then I've been the IT department.

Hi Mark

Have You made any poll among Your local collegeus about it

In general I have the impression that what co-workers consider to be a problem is not a problem for the IT-department and vice versa.

Desktop-support is not what an IT-department co-workers dream of to work with because:
a) it involves end-users.
b) issues that they many times have no clue how to solve.

Finally, working togheter with many central IT-department during the years I have the impression of that the lack of basic understanding why different department exist within organizations create many problems on all levels.

 

[Zack Barresse]

... the lack of basic understanding why different department exist within organizations create many problems on all levels.

You can only agree with that. Henry Mintzberg (as you and I have talked before Dennis) has some excellent books on Organization - must reads.