okay...
First, I've heard from old friends (system managers and up) that attrition will handle the work that is global sourced. By attrition, they include the release of contractors. You guys have a bunch.
As far as what I'm not getting from IS....
When I see what a release cost, and compare that to what was delivered, I'm amazed. We still have some people in the districts that can program. They make much less than IS, but can deliver things quickly.
I don't understand why you guys take so long and deliver so little?? Please explain that to me. What does an average release cost? How much do I get??
I must admit, that the quality of your systems has improved greatly over the years. However, the cost has as well.
In the field, we are asked to constantly do more with less. I would like IS to do the same.
P-Man
P-Man,
You raised some good points so I will offer some observations.
Question - Why do you guys take so long and deliver so little at such a high cost?
Answer / Observation - Delivering an IT solution in UPS includes approvals by software committees, hardware committees, testing certification groups, networking testing, security testing, etc.
All these processes add amounts of time and money into the final release costs which are usually never calculated up front. It's usually unclear as to who needs to be involved for all of these internal processes and approvals.
Even purchasing a vendor-developed software package becomes a long process of Z-scores, vendors reviews, licenses agreements, RFP, RFQ, etc.
Your programmer in the District is most likely bypassing these internal processes which allows him or her to crank out software at a pace much faster then the guys in IS who are navigating the internal approvals processes.
Some of these internal processes were developed many moons ago when a software deployment involved 24 disks installed on 500 PCs requiring 50 TSG guys on a weekend to make it happen.
IS needs to revisit these outdated processes for your release costs to go down. Software is more efficient now then it was 20 years ago.
Good luck P-Man!