In IT, there's reality, and then there's whatever the boss/project lead/stakeholder wants. Today, we're hosting a community discussion about what you, the IT guru, think is the single most powerful change your department could adopt, short of replacing your end users with robots. We'll be highlighting the best feedback next week, and returning to the topic in a series of reports we have in store for you over the next month or so. Here are the key questions:

What are the most productive changes IT departments today can make, based on your experience? What worked best at your company—and how did it help? If you are imagining a bold new direction, what obstacles do you expect?

Here's my take. Up in the Orbiting HQ, we have a sneaking suspicion that every IT department back on Earth has at least one big efficiency challenge. And it's common knowledge that IT departments are in upheaval, beset on the one side by users and on the other by budgets. Thus, one big efficiency boost I expect to see gain traction is the practice of letting users choose their own tools. Less than a year ago I spoke with an IT manager at Intel who said one of the best things his corporation ever did for efficiency was letting employees do their work on just about any device they—and not the IT department—wanted. As you know, this wouldn't have gone over well in most IT departments a decade ago. Intel ended up with 15,000 mobile devices hooked up to its e-mail system; nearly two-thirds of them were owned by employees. This was a big win for end users, for the budget, and for efficiency.

The so-called "consumerization of IT" (as in the Intel example above) stands out as one of the biggest user-facing improvements IT shops can make. As we know, only a small subset of IT's challenges directly face the user, but when IT shops and users work together, everyone can benefit.

For one thing, giving employees what they want prevents them from circumventing IT policy. Employees respect IT departments that are flexible, and they're generally willing to trade some freedoms for greater access. By setting official policies on the use of mobile phones in the workplace, you can gain control over the devices with encryption, PIN requirements, and the option to remotely wipe data in case of a lost phone. Try to ban them, and you risk circumvention and security risks.

And the process goes both ways. There’s a parallel trend that Intel calls the “IT-ization of consumers.” Intel told employees which devices would be eligible for corporate e-mail access, and employees based their own purchasing decisions upon Intel’s IT policies. By being flexible, Intel was able to give employees greater access to work systems while maintaining control over security policies and which types of devices would be allowed.

Related changes might be nearly as significant. In the future, for instance, I expect desktop and application virtualization to provide many more employees access to their work data and applications from any device they want. This effectively turns the desktop into a roaming profile, while giving IT shops control over what resources employees may access and the ability to provision new desktops quickly in case of device failure or hardware upgrades. While the technology is still evolving, enough pieces are already in place for IT to really support the mobile worker in creative new ways.

But the huge number of IT pros in the Ars Technica audience know these issues better than anyone. You've seen changes—good and bad, surprising and mundane—and you've seen the results. While we find the consumerization of IT to be particularly interesting, it’s not the only trend effecting big changes in business technology. Others are virtualization, cloud computing, unified communications, and taking your COO out to the woodshed (that last one is just a dream).

So, again, here's the discussion topic: What are the most productive changes IT departments today can make, based on your experience? What worked best at your company—and how did it help?

Over the next few days, we’re going to follow this comment thread and incorporate the most insightful responses into an article, providing an easy way for readers to skim the various ideas their own IT departments might make use of. We'll also highlight the best responses throughout the day; keep an eye on the Ars Technica Twitter feed for a list of the top ideas (using the hashtag #efficientIT). Let the discussion begin.

Tales from the trenches

Thanks for all the comments everyone! Now that we have a good discussion going, we’re going to highlight some of the more interesting thoughts.

Update, noon Eastern, Sept. 15:

We’ve gotten both positive and negative feedback for our support of greater use of personal devices at work. While some express frustration about the burden of supporting employee-owned devices, others said their own jobs would be easier if they were allowed to hook personal devices to corporate networks.

“I’m in a tug of war between employees who rely on me but are upset because my tasks require me to be away from my desk at least 60% of the day and my bosses who feel I don't need a mobile device,” reader geoken writes. “I offered what I thought was a great solution, let me access the exchange server from my personal smartphone. I thought it was a great solution, my company wouldn't need to worry about hardware costs or service plan costs and I would be able to work in a more efficient manner. The official response was that company owned data can only be accessed from company owned devices. I didn't bother protesting because there's no point but the stance seemed ridiculous to me.”

Reader swhx7, meanwhile, noted that “Allowing more personal devices is probably inevitable, but organizations are going to want to exert more control over them because of the obvious security hazards.”

The debate is moving beyond consumerization of IT as well. Reader Devin says a needed IT change is “Fully embracing root cause analysis. Nothing shows off inexperience and outright incompetence more than allowing the same incidents to occur time after time. Too many times I've noticed that organizationally we treat symptoms and very rarely cure the disease. How many times can we allow a site to go down because of an administrative oversight? How many times can we allow a USB drive to infect computers and blacklist an entire domain until every single computer is cleaned and cleared?”

Some of you offered ways to help users help themselves. “Training for users would be nice,” writes CompSciGuy. “I know that is a cost sensitive issue for companies. But they would save time and money in the end.” Colleyryan chips in with: “Have IT staff pair up with experts from other disciplines in the company to offer more in depth and knowledgeable training. Maybe someone from the PR department could team up with an IT employee to teach users about a tool like Twitter.”

Some of you brought up additional problems, such as the lack of standardization and simplification, leading to inefficiency, and the lack of computers “that were actually made in the last 10 years.” We probably can’t help you there.

Update, 3 p.m. Eastern, Sept. 15:

We’ve gotten numerous suggestions about technologies that can make IT more efficient: server virtualization and virtual desktops, upgrading computers from Windows XP, cleaning out shared drives, moving security beyond password management, ditching PBX for VoIP, and installing SSDs in all computers to limit frustration over long startup times. (As an everyday SSD user who purchased his own work computer, I can’t agree with that one more.) But perhaps the most interesting comments have centered on the interactions between IT departments and users, and the question of who sets policy.

“I met a taxi driver a couple of months back who was a former project manager. He said he actually makes more money driving around his taxi and enjoys the work far more, he couldn't believe he spent so long in IT,” robrob writes. “I think one huge problem with IT though is that you get these incredibly skilled people who think they have all the answers (and occasionally they actually do) with absolutely no business savvy being thrown in a business-controlle world.”

While we don’t want to turn this into an IT-vs.-user war, one reader complained that IT pros “treat users with contempt,” and another said “the ‘Us vs. Them’ mentality is still a huge hurdle.” While one reader suggests that IT can save users from themselves by removing administrative rights from their computers, others argue for giving users more rights.

Much of the tension comes down to corporate policy, and whether IT is seen as the author of policy or simply the enforcer of it.

“IT's job is difficult because at the end of the day, the IT department is responsible for the execution of company policy—nothing more, and nothing less,” writes Pokrface, a reader with IT experience at a multinational aerospace company. “IT's job isn't to make the printer print, or to approve handheld devices, or to decide which storage array to standardize on—all of those things are done by IT, but the ultimate goal is the execution of policy. For me, what I'd like to see IT do is to become the keeper of standards and the recommender of methods & ways; presenting the ‘correct’ way to do things for the rest of the company. Individual business units should then be empowered to accept IT computing standards or roll their own solutions, with the hard and fast understanding that they are on their own for support & interoperability. This lets IT focus on producing & documenting what will hopefully be the best solutions without wasting time on enforcement; at the same time, it gives flexibility at the BU level to deviate from standards where it makes sense.”

A more decentralized approach to IT management would let business users solve their own problems, reader bsiu argues. “Allowing users to do some development to solve their own problems is another example (Access databases, anyone?). Yes, the code will be terrible and inefficient. Yes, it is asking for trouble down the road because it won't scale. But it solves the user department's problem *now* with minimal involvement from IT: most of the users willing to do software development are capable of supporting their own tools.”

While bsiu appears to be talking about tech-savvy users, we all know some employees have trouble solving the most basic computer problems, and IT shops have to help everyone as best they can.

Reader Devin reminds us that “IT serves the business. IT should never dictate company policy, security or otherwise. IT should translate business needs and priorities into policy that enables users to work with all information technology transparently. I've been at too many companies where IT uses a hammer to drive stakes through chains shackling the users. This causes business to suffer, customers to complain, and reputation to decline.”

Update, 6 p.m. Eastern, Sept. 15

The discussion isn’t going at the same fever pitch it hit earlier today, but some of you are still debating and raising good points. KungFuQuip notes that the consumerization of IT brings security risks: “The real threat that a disgruntled employee will walk out the door with your intellectual property on their personal computer - and you will have a tough time getting it back.”

Whether your company embraces consumerization or discourages it, there are always benefits to be gained when IT pros work with users collaboratively.

“Technology exists so that we can bend it to our will, to make our lives and jobs easier,” writes ronelson. “This means that IT people need to spend some time with the people who will be using the technology, both to work side by side and get a better understanding and to have ongoing discussions with the stakeholders. Of course, they have to do more than just spend time, they have to listen. Groups that listen may not be the cheapest or fastest, but what they deploy is adopted and enjoyed by the users.”

One IT director reports that accepting consumerization “was a bit difficult for me,” but “I can attest to the big increase in efficiency it provides my department.” With dispersed user bases, it often makes sense to let employees use their own equipment, and the proliferation of Web services and virtualization is making this easier.

“The single biggest and best change, from my point of view, is the move towards SaaS/PaaS and virtualization products in small to medium business,” the IT director, severusx, writes. “When all I have to worry about is an Internet connection and the software development part of an application, it makes my job 100% easier. No longer are large clusters of servers with expensive database applications needed. We simply build the app on our preferred cloud provider and off we go. While IT budgets have been largely flat or decreasing, we are able to more with less because of this change.”

Many of you are stressing the need for communicating with users. “I spend my lunch hours with my users every day and try very hard to understand what would serve them and the company best,” writes oddmyth. “In essence I feel it is the purpose of IT to make knowledge available, encourage adoption of new technologies where possible and provide insight into how to alleviate problems before they start.”

That sounds like a great approach.

Update, 8:30 a.m. Eastern, Sept. 16

Earlier, we talked about proposals to let users be more independent, and now we’re hearing from users who say their efforts on this front were met with resistance. SinclairZX81 reports being forced to use a network and servers hampered by outages and performance problems.

“What we needed - and proposed - was a simple NAS and switch in our department, keeping all of our traffic off the larger company network. We were willing to take it out of our own budget and maintain it all ourselves - totally our responsibility,” the reader writes. “After submitting all the paperwork to IT (in triplicate), we were flatly shut down and told we had to use the regular network and servers. We discussed the performance issues and were told that they ‘would look into it.’ Of course, nothing ever happened on that score.”

Still another end user shares an approach to working with a stressed-out IT staff. “I have read many horror stories about them having to deal with all sorts of irritating and impatient users, and I know customer-facing jobs are always stressful, so I figure it's an onus on me to be as courteous as possible towards them whenever I'm interacting,” sidran32 comments.

Many of you called out sources of inefficiency in IT, from management and poor processes to technology. With technology, there are at least two types of problems: Using outdated systems that are roadblocks to people getting work done, or spending too much on computers that aren’t necessary. The reader Pinko! supports virtualization to minimize expense on hardware without depriving users of the tools needed to do their jobs.

“Someone was saying how they blew their budget on shiny new laptops when a netbook would have sufficed. There is a similar issue where I work,” Pinko! writes. “We currently have users running PCs with Core i5's or Core 2 Quad's to run Office or some proprietary database software. That is a lot of wasted energy. The last place I worked was running thin clients at the desktop connected to a Terminal Server. Applications were virtualized and the servers were running at a healthy load. There was a lot more bang for your energy dollar. Server virtualization is also a path that my prior and current employer are on. In my experience this has been a truly wonderful technology that has brought down the number of low-usage servers that sit and idle your money away.”

We’ll be back later in the day with more discussion.

Update, 1 p.m. Eastern, Sept. 16

A reader named flameboy wrote in to say IT departments still struggling to get basic processes in place, and may not be advanced enough to take advantage of technologies like cloud computing and virtualization.

“Consumerization, Cloud, VoIP, Virtualization - these things are all nice but require the IT department to be evolved enough to do them,” flameboy writes. “As a SysAdmin I still see so many IT teams that can't get the basics right and instead spend all of their time reacting and fixing the same problems over and over. The single best change for most IT departments would be taking a step back and taking a critical look at what you do and how you do it. Work out what is wrong. Then fix the quick wins (stabilize the patient) so you can free up some time, find and fix the bigger problems, make things repeatable (document, automate) and keep at it.”

In response to one suggestion that IT pros need to learn to “get out of the way,” steviesteveo writes “Amen to that. You have to be careful that the tail doesn't start wagging the dog when looking at IT.”

Thanks to everyone for participating. Feel free to continue commenting, and we’ll be back on Monday with a new story recapping the discussion.