Thimbles & Care

An editorial in Monday’s Daily Texan ended:

… UT should hire UT staff and Texas programmers to custom build its administrative systems.

I’m not sure why the author would suggest that. After all, that’s what the University’s been doing for almost five decades, and look at all the pain and suffering that’s caused.

There are other reasons you can tell this wouldn’t work:

• You never see articles in magazines for CIOs and CFOs that talk about custom building, so it must be a bad idea.
• It would require business managers at the University to have a passing acquaintance with information technology and technology trends. They might even need to develop a vision about how technology could help the University work better.
• Have you ever tried managing programmers? It’s the proverbial herding cats experience. It’s much easier to pay other people to deal with that.
• If something goes wrong, you can’t blame it on anyone else.

We definitely need to nip this idea in the bud.