Twelve Steps to Information Technology Sobriety

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by John Krzyzewski, Draper Systems Inc. (IT consultants)

Here are 12 steps which others have used to recover from the 'Millennium Demon':

1.We admitted we were powerless over the Millennium Demon, and that our business would become unmanageable.

2.Came to believe that only Powers greater than ourselves could restore us to operational sanity.

3.Made a decision to turn our company's fate over to the care of IT as we understood it.

4.Made a searching and fearless physical inventory of our hardware and software assets.

5.Admitted to IT, to ourselves, and to our shareholders the exact nature of our dependence on non-compliant technology.

6.Were entirely ready to have IT remove all these defects of our business process.

7.Humbly asked our IS contractor to remove our processing shortcomings.

8.Made a list of all external suppliers and customers, who could be harmed, and became willing to make amendments to our interfaces with all of them.

9.Made direct amendments to the interfaces with such companies or people wherever possible, except when to do so would adversely impact them or their systems.

10.Continued to take physical inventory, and when we missed another potential error promptly admitted it and took steps to correct it.

11.Sought through paying for remediation to improve our image with the Chairman as we understood him, hoping only for knowledge of his whims for us and the delegated power to carry them out.

12.Having had a financial awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to compuholics, and to practice these principles in all our commercial affairs.

Many of us exclaimed, "What an order! We can't go through with it." Do not be discouraged. No one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles. We are not saints. The point is, that we are willing to grow along functional lines. The principles we have set down are guides to progress. We claim operational progress rather than operational perfection.

[With apologies to Alcoholics Anonymous.]

John Krzyzewski

Draper Systems Inc.

Kelowna, BC