Just a thought…

Last week I was flying abroad for my work. I still find flying a special event. It starts for me with the sound of your carry on luggage on the walkway ending with the a gentle voice telling you “Mind your stap”. After being checked in by a friendly ground stewardess (somehow I forgot the possibility of using the self service kiosk), I walked to immigration and customs. The officer looked with a sharp eye to me, asking me my destination and purpose of my travel. I still find it curious to ask this before leaving the country. Finally I arrived at the gate en set down at one of the benches near the window. I watched men walking around ‘my’ airplane in blue overall trying to fix something on the wing of the plane. And while I sat there I asked myself why in IT we do our work so differently.

What do I mean? Well, we expect from some people in an IT-department to be stewardess, immigration officer and mechanic at the same time. Take the system administrator we expect him to take care of security (immigration officer), fix incidents (mechanic), and in some cases even take care of service requests and answer customer requests (ground stewardess).

Is it really fair asking this of one person at once? The obvious answer would be no. But what would be the right way of dealing with this? I don’t have the answer right away, but I did wanted to share my thoughts with you.