3 ms·

The dynamics feel a bit like good cop / bad cop on an organisational level. "I'd personally love to let X occur .. but it's not allowed due to company policy.

by lwhi 6y ago

The dynamics feel a bit like good cop / bad cop on an organisational level. "I'd personally love to let X occur .. but it's not allowed due to company policy. This is mandatory." I have always believed everything is negotiable in business. As people, we're subject to the rule of law, and obviously our businesses need to operate accordingly. However, the policies that a company uses are really just a snapshot of current thinking. Nothing more than that; and thinking obviously changes.

arethuza 6y ago
"and thinking obviously changes" Sometimes it doesn't - sometimes people vehemently insist on application of policies even though what they produce is ridiculous. At a former employer I was quoted £70K (yes seventy thousand) for internal hosting of a not particularly business critical single static HTML page that would be accessed by maybe 100 people. I actually got a breakdown and it all made sense if you applied the policies the infrastructure team had invented - it didn't matter that the result was nonsense.
- namibj 6y ago
  What does one have to do to get to such crazy numbers for a task so simple?
  - hyperman1 6y ago
    Let's see: A risk and impact analysis, a requirement check, a capacity audit, a full blown security audit, a data retention policy, a storage size study, a ton of policies to fill in so you get a dns name, a financial audit, setup of a new bookkeeping post so all these activities have somewhere to book their time, a project for that post, a language and style audit, a translation study to decide nothing needs a translation, ... I easily see more than 100 people working on this.
  - arethuza 6y ago
    Well, apparently it counted as a separate application - so that required redundant (virtual servers) plus back-end databases. Add DR environment and live replication of VMs and databases, database backup retention planning, off-site storage costs. Ultra high performance SAN storage for all of that. Add pre-prod and test environments as well and it soon adds up.... apparently. Turns out the internal infrastructure recharging model didn't scale down and as it was a "process" it couldn't be changed.
- Chris2048 6y ago
  > it all made sense if you applied the policies the infrastructure team had invented Was it basically "we charge more for stuff we don't want to do"? Makes sense, like: > When a customer asked if he could have chips with his lunch, White hand-cut and personally cooked the chips, but charged the customer £25 for his time. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Pierre_White#cite_note-observer-ferguson-13 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Pierre_White#cite_note-o...

by lwhi 6y ago

arethuza 6y ago

"and thinking obviously changes" Sometimes it doesn't - sometimes people vehemently insist on application of policies even though what they produce is ridiculous. At a former employer I was quoted £70K (yes seventy thousand) for internal hosting of a not particularly business critical single static HTML page that would be accessed by maybe 100 people. I actually got a breakdown and it all made sense if you applied the policies the infrastructure team had invented - it didn't matter that the result was nonsense.

namibj 6y ago
What does one have to do to get to such crazy numbers for a task so simple?
- hyperman1 6y ago
  Let's see: A risk and impact analysis, a requirement check, a capacity audit, a full blown security audit, a data retention policy, a storage size study, a ton of policies to fill in so you get a dns name, a financial audit, setup of a new bookkeeping post so all these activities have somewhere to book their time, a project for that post, a language and style audit, a translation study to decide nothing needs a translation, ... I easily see more than 100 people working on this.
- arethuza 6y ago
  Well, apparently it counted as a separate application - so that required redundant (virtual servers) plus back-end databases. Add DR environment and live replication of VMs and databases, database backup retention planning, off-site storage costs. Ultra high performance SAN storage for all of that. Add pre-prod and test environments as well and it soon adds up.... apparently. Turns out the internal infrastructure recharging model didn't scale down and as it was a "process" it couldn't be changed.
Chris2048 6y ago
> it all made sense if you applied the policies the infrastructure team had invented Was it basically "we charge more for stuff we don't want to do"? Makes sense, like: > When a customer asked if he could have chips with his lunch, White hand-cut and personally cooked the chips, but charged the customer £25 for his time. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Pierre_White#cite_note-observer-ferguson-13 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Pierre_White#cite_note-o...