Fix the organisation first

“Yes, of course Mr Blenkinsop, our ACME-fab development environment will solve all your problems. Simple install the software package and then you can produce business apps for all your target platforms, in record time and roll them out with ease…”

Companies have fallen for this kind of sales pitch time and time again leaving many of them with a disparate set of IT solutions. The truth is that most IT problems, that is to say problems that a customer blames on the technology they use, are caused by failings in the way their organisation functions. No amount of changing software will fix things, in fact the companies would be better off addressing the organisational issues BEFORE changing their IT systems radically.

H-Online has an interesting overview of two project that attempted to transition from Microsoft Office based solutions to Open Source Office solutions. You might be forgiven for thinking that switching from MS Office to Open Office should just be a case of uninstalling the former and installing the later. Of course, it isn’t that simple.

One organisation (Munich City Council) has been rather successful, the other, Freiburg City Council has been judged to be a failure.

Guess which one of the two seemed to think that swapping one application for another one would fix their problems?

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