IT departments hate web developers
10th May 2008 by David North
One thing that my colleagues and I encounter on occasion is IT departments being unhelpful or damn right obstructive to anything we might be trying to implement online for their company. Certainly there are exceptions to the rule but for the most part IT don’t want any web development companies moving into what they think is their domain.
For a lot of IT departments there can be serious divisions with outside operators or even other departments in a company. Over more recent years the marketing department has strayed into the IT space and by some it is met with horror.
I’m not totally blaming those in IT having this reaction. Being in IT can be one of the most thankless tasks - no one knows you are there until something goes wrong! When things are going great you are just invisible!
So why do IT departments seem so threatened by an online team working on the company projects?
I think the first reason is ownership. IT departments have felt they ”own” anything related to technology - the website and online presence fall under this. Therefore they should be the only people to touch it - there seems to be a fear that anyone else will break it! Also to certain extent the website is an extension of the IT department that does get noticed by people so losing this might also lose them some of the credit they receive.
There also seems to be a fear that someone else treading into their usual haunts might show them up in some way and therefore count negatively against them.
Finally I think there is a certain arrogance of some members of IT that they can turn their hand to anything technical whether that is setting up a new server or writing a new e-commerce website - it’s only software after all?
So what’s my answer to this? Well from a professional perspective it’s more annoying than anything else. We’re both trying to provide a service and no matter what the IT department does I’m not going away - being obstructive will just waste both of our time. It’s never the intention of a web company to show up anyone internally - the two disciplines are closely related and complement each other. IT departments that have been open to this change have found that we can work together closely and can help each other out significantly.
My second point is that web development is no longer just the domain of programmers and designers - if you want a website to work hard you’ve got to see it as a marketing tool. In addition there are a great deal of other disciplines in play here other than the HTML. IT need to realise this is a specialism that crosses over to other areas than their department.
IT departments are essential so no matter what the online bods do they are safe. Just let us work together and both our lives would be a lot easier.
Well formed argument Dave. We probably discuss this on a weekly basis! Like you say, in order to create a strong commercial website it takes a number of different specialities. You only need to take a look at the shift in media spend to see that online is being recognised by marketing professionals as a neccessity. We need to be able to use the skills that traditional marketeers have in creating brand impact as well as all the items that we, as responsible web designers and developers need to take on board such as semantic structure, usability and accessibility. Someone else needs to be a SEO guru, calculating trends, the competition and directing campaigns. The IT team needs to work alongside all these people to integrate the web site with existing systems in the easiest, most productive way. Everyone has a strong role to play, being obstructive and protective will slow things down.