If you didn’t believe my ramblings in “Common Sense and Technology Selection“, I’ve got a nice anecdotal (and funny) story that backs up my assertion that common sense is lacking in the technology selection process in most organizations.
Jump over to The Daily WTF and read this story….I’ll wait for you. Go.
Did you read it? It’s funny…but sad. And true. And this type of approach (selection via buzzwords) costs companies’ millions of dollars a year (if not billions).
If you didn’t read my “Common Sense and Technology Selection” article (shame on you!), here’s the process that many companies use today for selecting technology (the one that doesn’t use common sense):
- Hear about the “latest technology” and/or hear a buzzword.
- Think “yes…we need that….that will make everything better!”
- Talk to a few vendors.
- See a demo.
- Buy the platform
- Throw it over the wall to the technology group to implement.
- Go look for your next buzzword.
Now…go read this passage from the the story on The Daily WTF:
The next time I met him, a scant 6 months later, he was backing into my loading dock with a truck full of brand new desktop PCs, older servers, and all manner of fancy Cisco 10/100 and Gigabit gear. “The CEO read a pamphlet about the lower total cost of ownership of thin clients. We’re rolling them out branch-by-branch now. The server and network upgrades are killing us. All these shiny new desktops are going to be coming your way now.”
In the story that is related on The Daily WTF, this particular company my 5 or 6 trips to ‘recycle’ their computer equipment. How much money do you think this cost the company? Had to be an enormous amount.
