The IS handbook of auto repair. (information systems)

Imagine taking our car into the shop for repairs. We tell the head mechanic "I need a new water pump". All the mechanic thinks he has to do is drain the radiator, take out the old pump, put in a new one, then refill the radiator with new fluid.

The mechanic never has changed a water pump and he does not have any technical manuals for our make and model of car, but he thinks to himself, "That sounds exactly like changing oil and an oil filter, my team and I have done that many times in 10 minutes. I better add a little extra time for a learning curve though." Out loud he claims, "We can have it done in 15 minutes."

We hand over the keys and walk away expecting the job to be done in 15 minutes. Not until the mechanical team raises the hood of that car do they really understand the magnitude of the job he has taken on. After they drained the radiator, they realize it's in poor shape and has to be replaced.

To get to the water pump they find out they have to remove the radiator first, and a few other parts in the way, then untangle a web of belts attached to the water pump. All of the replacement parts are just laying around, because the owner does not want the mechanics to waste time with housekeeping chores, so a large part of any job is spent hunting for the right part.

Many of the mechanics do not know how to use the few power tools the shop has, so the power tools go unused while the mechanics try to make a pair of pliers do the job of a ratchet set. In order to save money, the owner of the shop has decided not to hire people to "just sit" at the service counter. Instead, if the phone rings or someone pulls up to the counter, one of the mechanics has to stop what they are doing and take care of the service counter.

Is this any way to run an auto repair shop? Of course not, yet this is the way many Information System (IS) shops are run today. Let compare some typical IS shops to the repair shop illustrated above.

First there is a lack of support people. Many IS managers believe the best way to run a shop is to hire nothing but programmers. In the shop where I was working, we had programmers teaching data entry operators how to use the system and had programmers assembling new work stations. We even had programmers writing memos to clients that were dictated by the shop manager.