12 ‘Best Practices’ IT Should Avoid

How can IT organizations succeed? By following the “industry best practices” that draw on the experiences of the most flourishing organizations and the knowledge of the most authoritative experts? Well, it’s not that simple. On the contrary, many “best practices” such as the following ones are often the surefire recipes for IT failure.

1. Tell everyone they’re your customer

IT people are frequently advised to tell everyone outside of IT, “You’re my customer. My job is to make you happy.” This is wrong. People from IT and other parts of an organization are colleagues who collaborate as equals to make the company thrive as a whole. IT shouldn’t be placed in a subservient position to serve their colleagues; all employees in an organization need to work closely with each other to serve the company’s actual customers and make THEM happy.

2. Establish SLAs and treat them like contracts

In many companies, internal contracts — Service Level Agreements — are signed between IT department and other parts to “improve” IT service. But does that work? Not really. SLA is a commitment between a service provider and a client, which makes IT subject to their outside-IT colleagues’ demands. This is the worst way to build a trust-based relationship between IT and the other departments, since the purpose of contracts such as…