Can BYOD lift the IT support burden?

Computerworld - BYOD is kaizen.

The three or four of you who completely understand what I just said will have to forgive me while I explain myself to the others.

You probably associate the concept of kaizen with the quality initiative known as continuous improvement, but the literal meaning of the Japanese word is "good change."

Computerworld - BYOD is kaizen.

The three or four of you who completely understand what I just said will have to forgive me while I explain myself to the others.

You probably associate the concept of kaizen with the quality initiative known as continuous improvement, but the literal meaning of the Japanese word is "good change."

And when I say that BYOD is kaizen, I mean that I see good change for IT. Yes, I know that a lot of people worry that letting employees use their own PCs and other devices at work will be a drag on IT because it will complicate support issues. But what I routinely see is companies taking solid steps away from IT support burdens with BYOD, making their organizations more efficient and employees more effective in the process.

This fits in beautifully with the kaizen concept. After all, Masaaki Imai, the father of kaizen, said, "You don't need to spend much money to improve something. Look around and your common sense will show you simple ways to rationalize your everyday work."

When it comes to BYOD rationalizing your everyday work, the first thing that's necessary is making sure that you have a clear understanding of what BYOD means for your organization and that everyone else is on the same page. Will you accommodate any version of Windows, plus the Mac OS, or can you narrow it down to, say, Windows 8 PCs and Macs? Spell it out.

Macs are a great place to start a BYOD initiative, though, because they're popular with employees and will let you test the limits of your dependencies on the Windows OS in your environment. Supporting Macs will force you to simplify and standardize the services people will access and can help jump-start new initiatives like moving to more cloud-based apps.

But just how broad should your commitment to support new platforms be? For IT to benefit from BYOD, it has to limit its own involvement in support. It's critical that IT think through the boundaries for the BYOD program, and once they are set everyone in the organization must understand exactly what the limits are. For example, you'll want to consider these things:

What will employees be responsible for? At the start of your BYOD program, the technical orientation of participants needs to be pretty strong -- at least until the tracks are well worn and you amass enough internal experience and stored knowledge in a place where others can find it, and acquire technology capabilities to efficiently expand the program. Make the lines of responsibility as clear as you can. For example, IT might decide to provide advice and guidance for setting up access to the corporate email system, the secure access gateway, remote desktop services and similar things, but it should not be on the hook for supporting an employee's computer itself or the OS and applications installed on it.

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