Comment Calm down kids, brainee; do not quit, do the next (Score 1) 408
brainee, you said :
I work in the IS department for a manufacturer
That means you are dealing with the most savy style of management in the arena of managers. You have good managers that can listen to employees, talk to each other, and work things out to keep the ship sailing. The worst environment for managers is in the manufacturing sector. It has no mercy on a manager that does not perform up to expectations. I am possitive that you are not the only one who is stressed out at your work place.
you also said:
I can't mention who I work for since we deal with government contracts
That means that the source of finance for your company to finance production and operations are not from the stock market. Your company is getting financed by treasury bills, or treasury notes.
To know the meaning of it, it simply means that the government issues a bond to investors (usually in increments of $1,000 bonds), to do a certain project, for a certain amount of years until the bond reaches maturity. T-bills are less than a year (4-weeks, 13-weeks, 26-weeks), T-notes are 2 years, 5 years, and 10 years.
What it means to you, is that sources of finance for your manufacturer has been issued already, and there is no more money coming in AT ALL.
You are working in a tight ship, just like everyone around you in the whole company. You are not the only one suffering in your company. You are NOT getting financed by Corporate America stock market. Corporate America has different dynamics for finance that works in the increments of 3 months, or quarterly budget, that drives from an annual budget.
In Corporate Amrica, you can convince people that the need for better software, hardware, networks, security, and trainning is needed, and the board of directors will be VERY VERY HAPPY, as they will issue more stocks in the market to finance the growth, making them eligible for a cut of the deal as a bonus, making them also looking good infront of the investors as they are on "the top of new technology.
That is not your case. Welcome to the world of Government contracts.
You also said:
I presented a proposal to them about 2 weeks ago which completely negates that and several other ideas they've had about IS. Management accepted the proposal
That means that :
1- Your management team listens to you.
2- Your management can see that you are working very hard, and trying to come up with ways to do things better.
3- Your management trusts your judgment, and willing to give you what you want IF and only IF you take it easy on them, and explain it in their language, which you did.
Bottom line; Good job.
You also said:
When the IS department was started, it was started by a hobbyist ... who knew nothing about management or any of the major issues that befall a traditional IS dept.
That means you are left with old undergraded hardware, old operating systems (I estimate that you might have a win95 machine running somewhere on the floor) non-matching hardware (your ghosting process takes longer than it should), in addition to aging wires, routers, switches, and network cards.
You also said:
we have an in-house programmer in accounting who uses Access
That means you have a buddy in the place, and he is aware of the problems of Access, and wishes to use something else that has more power.
I believe that if you know how to build an application on Access, you definetly can learn how to build an application in Oracle, PHP/MySQL, and on DB2. A programmer is a programmer, and can get to work, regardless of the platform.
Above said, summery in 3 points
1- No more money coming in for major Hardeware changes.
2- Old software and small scale applications consume your companies resources.
3- Change is possible in your company, but in small steps.
Bottom line; Software change is what is needed, and the only possible one.
My suggestion is a 4 steps prorgam;
Phase Alpha: Without telling anyone, In your IT/IS room, load an Open source OS, Linux or Free/net/Open BSD on two machines, one as a server, the second as a work station. Choose Oracle or MySQL based on lisence price, and load them as a server and client.
Connect them to the network in your lab, use the server as a file server back-up for your existing file server, load webmin client and server on both machines, and use webmin to administer both machines.
When you feel that they are running smoothly, invite the managers for a one mintue session, one at a time, to your lab, to see how you can send and recieve emails, use the browser, and edit spreadsheets on your workstation, and show them that the computer has uptime for a week, without the need to reboot, without viruses, with easy updates (I recommend Red Hat linux, or Suse Novell/Linux) with no cost for software.
Make them see a small sample live, up and running.
Phase Beta: invite your buddy, Access programmer/accountant to your lab, and explain to him that you want his help migrating his application to Oracle, or MySQL. Explain the needed lisence budget, and show him a tour of Oracle interface for programming, applications, migration process, and -most important- speed comparison between Access and Oracle.
Win him next to your side. Keep the communications open between both of you constantly.
The moment he teams up with you, and begins to build a front end for his applicaton on oracle client, to interface with his Access backend, you win half of the battle.
Phase Gamma; Follow the advice of the gentleman who suggested that you keep a spreadsheet that tracks your activities by time and action. If you do not have an application yet that tracks your action, try e-track sw, or maybe use the current wizard of MS Access to build a database for your activities. The main reason to present yourself and your work with a tool that eveyone is using, thus keep them feeling safe tawords you.
Find an adventurous end user with a good attitude, with desire to learn, who would like to try new things, make sure his manager/supervisor is in the picture, add the new Linux workstation, with the new oracle front end of Access database to his/her desk. Train that user on email evolution, OpenOffice.org, browser Mozilla or Opera, Real Player and Kaffeine media players (if allowed by managers), and Imendio planner project management sw. Have that user get used to it, and talk to you on daily basis for 5 minutes on how things going and what are the downfalls they are facing.
Inform your managers that you are working on an experiment to see how far things will work for them, by monitoring that users productivity. Chances are, no viruses=happy users.
give it 6 weeks.
You will see how far everyone will complain about a virus, a spam, a freeze, a blue screen, and that user will just work smoothly without complaints, just how-to questions, with no sw trouble or maintenance.
Phase Delta; Show your progress spreadsheet, and that users activity, and compare those activies before your managers. Add dollar cost to software prices, virus updates, your time, user time, and anything in between. Ask to expand the experiment to 5 other users.
Insist on upgrading Linux with a Government approved security patch, like SE Linux. SE Linux (SE for Security Enhanced) today is the official software of the National Security Agency, nick named Big brother. This can help bring your management to understand that you are working within the Government environment, and can convince the upper layer of politicians whom are watching your company to let you carry on with the changes.
give it 8 weeks for the 5 new users.
Now you have 6 people of the staff, that know the new OS, application, and environment, that can answer questions to the big crowd upon deciding to do the big software move to change the whole place, That change can be done over 6 to 8 weeks, depending on which employees are the least or most resistant to changes.
With the money saved from lisence and anti virus packages, post your suggestion to invest that money in an IBM Blade cabinet servers(or SUN Microsystems if you want). They must listen to you because of a simple reason.
Government contracts are different in budgets than Corporate America. If you save money at the end of the year in Corporate, you are praised and tapped on your back. If you do the same in Government contracts, you will face hell on earth. Governments do not joke around, if you ask for money on a budget, YOU MUST SPEND IT, NO MORE THAN GIVEN, NO LESS THAN GIVEN.
Consult with your accounting dept to get help on moving the money being spent on anti virus, lisence, sw updates, to Oracle lisence, and Blade servers.
This plan will take you 4 to six months. Hopefully, if everything goes the way it is going in all governemnt companies and agencies migrating to Linux, you should be fine at the end, and you might 'borrow a couple of the employees on the floor to help you with answering users questions, and possibly train the managers on webmin, so they can manage their teams user names, passwords, level of security, ownership of files and folders, etc (open webmin and see users rights. Open also SE Linux levels of security to get a hint of what I am talking about) Managers can do that without getting back to you in every small detail, giving them more power than they ever thought they may have on the job.
Good luck.
I work in the IS department for a manufacturer
That means you are dealing with the most savy style of management in the arena of managers. You have good managers that can listen to employees, talk to each other, and work things out to keep the ship sailing. The worst environment for managers is in the manufacturing sector. It has no mercy on a manager that does not perform up to expectations. I am possitive that you are not the only one who is stressed out at your work place.
you also said:
I can't mention who I work for since we deal with government contracts
That means that the source of finance for your company to finance production and operations are not from the stock market. Your company is getting financed by treasury bills, or treasury notes.
To know the meaning of it, it simply means that the government issues a bond to investors (usually in increments of $1,000 bonds), to do a certain project, for a certain amount of years until the bond reaches maturity. T-bills are less than a year (4-weeks, 13-weeks, 26-weeks), T-notes are 2 years, 5 years, and 10 years.
What it means to you, is that sources of finance for your manufacturer has been issued already, and there is no more money coming in AT ALL.
You are working in a tight ship, just like everyone around you in the whole company. You are not the only one suffering in your company. You are NOT getting financed by Corporate America stock market. Corporate America has different dynamics for finance that works in the increments of 3 months, or quarterly budget, that drives from an annual budget.
In Corporate Amrica, you can convince people that the need for better software, hardware, networks, security, and trainning is needed, and the board of directors will be VERY VERY HAPPY, as they will issue more stocks in the market to finance the growth, making them eligible for a cut of the deal as a bonus, making them also looking good infront of the investors as they are on "the top of new technology.
That is not your case. Welcome to the world of Government contracts.
You also said:
I presented a proposal to them about 2 weeks ago which completely negates that and several other ideas they've had about IS. Management accepted the proposal
That means that :
1- Your management team listens to you.
2- Your management can see that you are working very hard, and trying to come up with ways to do things better.
3- Your management trusts your judgment, and willing to give you what you want IF and only IF you take it easy on them, and explain it in their language, which you did.
Bottom line; Good job.
You also said:
When the IS department was started, it was started by a hobbyist
That means you are left with old undergraded hardware, old operating systems (I estimate that you might have a win95 machine running somewhere on the floor) non-matching hardware (your ghosting process takes longer than it should), in addition to aging wires, routers, switches, and network cards.
You also said:
we have an in-house programmer in accounting who uses Access
That means you have a buddy in the place, and he is aware of the problems of Access, and wishes to use something else that has more power.
I believe that if you know how to build an application on Access, you definetly can learn how to build an application in Oracle, PHP/MySQL, and on DB2. A programmer is a programmer, and can get to work, regardless of the platform.
Above said, summery in 3 points
1- No more money coming in for major Hardeware changes.
2- Old software and small scale applications consume your companies resources.
3- Change is possible in your company, but in small steps.
Bottom line; Software change is what is needed, and the only possible one.
My suggestion is a 4 steps prorgam;
Phase Alpha: Without telling anyone, In your IT/IS room, load an Open source OS, Linux or Free/net/Open BSD on two machines, one as a server, the second as a work station. Choose Oracle or MySQL based on lisence price, and load them as a server and client.
Connect them to the network in your lab, use the server as a file server back-up for your existing file server, load webmin client and server on both machines, and use webmin to administer both machines.
When you feel that they are running smoothly, invite the managers for a one mintue session, one at a time, to your lab, to see how you can send and recieve emails, use the browser, and edit spreadsheets on your workstation, and show them that the computer has uptime for a week, without the need to reboot, without viruses, with easy updates (I recommend Red Hat linux, or Suse Novell/Linux) with no cost for software.
Make them see a small sample live, up and running.
Phase Beta: invite your buddy, Access programmer/accountant to your lab, and explain to him that you want his help migrating his application to Oracle, or MySQL. Explain the needed lisence budget, and show him a tour of Oracle interface for programming, applications, migration process, and -most important- speed comparison between Access and Oracle.
Win him next to your side. Keep the communications open between both of you constantly.
The moment he teams up with you, and begins to build a front end for his applicaton on oracle client, to interface with his Access backend, you win half of the battle.
Phase Gamma; Follow the advice of the gentleman who suggested that you keep a spreadsheet that tracks your activities by time and action. If you do not have an application yet that tracks your action, try e-track sw, or maybe use the current wizard of MS Access to build a database for your activities. The main reason to present yourself and your work with a tool that eveyone is using, thus keep them feeling safe tawords you.
Find an adventurous end user with a good attitude, with desire to learn, who would like to try new things, make sure his manager/supervisor is in the picture, add the new Linux workstation, with the new oracle front end of Access database to his/her desk. Train that user on email evolution, OpenOffice.org, browser Mozilla or Opera, Real Player and Kaffeine media players (if allowed by managers), and Imendio planner project management sw. Have that user get used to it, and talk to you on daily basis for 5 minutes on how things going and what are the downfalls they are facing.
Inform your managers that you are working on an experiment to see how far things will work for them, by monitoring that users productivity. Chances are, no viruses=happy users.
give it 6 weeks.
You will see how far everyone will complain about a virus, a spam, a freeze, a blue screen, and that user will just work smoothly without complaints, just how-to questions, with no sw trouble or maintenance.
Phase Delta; Show your progress spreadsheet, and that users activity, and compare those activies before your managers. Add dollar cost to software prices, virus updates, your time, user time, and anything in between. Ask to expand the experiment to 5 other users.
Insist on upgrading Linux with a Government approved security patch, like SE Linux. SE Linux (SE for Security Enhanced) today is the official software of the National Security Agency, nick named Big brother. This can help bring your management to understand that you are working within the Government environment, and can convince the upper layer of politicians whom are watching your company to let you carry on with the changes.
give it 8 weeks for the 5 new users.
Now you have 6 people of the staff, that know the new OS, application, and environment, that can answer questions to the big crowd upon deciding to do the big software move to change the whole place, That change can be done over 6 to 8 weeks, depending on which employees are the least or most resistant to changes.
With the money saved from lisence and anti virus packages, post your suggestion to invest that money in an IBM Blade cabinet servers(or SUN Microsystems if you want). They must listen to you because of a simple reason.
Government contracts are different in budgets than Corporate America. If you save money at the end of the year in Corporate, you are praised and tapped on your back. If you do the same in Government contracts, you will face hell on earth. Governments do not joke around, if you ask for money on a budget, YOU MUST SPEND IT, NO MORE THAN GIVEN, NO LESS THAN GIVEN.
Consult with your accounting dept to get help on moving the money being spent on anti virus, lisence, sw updates, to Oracle lisence, and Blade servers.
This plan will take you 4 to six months. Hopefully, if everything goes the way it is going in all governemnt companies and agencies migrating to Linux, you should be fine at the end, and you might 'borrow a couple of the employees on the floor to help you with answering users questions, and possibly train the managers on webmin, so they can manage their teams user names, passwords, level of security, ownership of files and folders, etc (open webmin and see users rights. Open also SE Linux levels of security to get a hint of what I am talking about) Managers can do that without getting back to you in every small detail, giving them more power than they ever thought they may have on the job.
Good luck.
