Friday, November 02, 2012

The five stages of BYOD

The "Five Stages of Grief" (aka the Kübler-Ross model) as applied to Bring-your-own-Device.
Denial. It's just a passing fad. Or maybe we'll just get rid of those damned entitled Millennials who think they can bring their iPads into work. They'll learn soon enough how things work in the real world. Well at least we don't actually have to let them on the corporate network. Right? Right???
Anger. Don't people know IT tells them what devices and software they can and can't use. I'm sending out an email reminding everyone just who is in charge about this and they'd better shape up or else! WTF? Is that our CEO tapping away on a tablet over there?
Bargaining. OK, everyone. I get that you say these things make you more productive and all that. Tell you what. Let me load up a bunch of special monitoring and control software on those devices you bought yourself and we can all be friends again--just as soon as you read and sign this 50 page contract documenting the rules you'll need to follow.
Depression. I've lost control. I can't do my job. There's going to be a security breach and I'm going to be blamed. Nobody understands that IT has responsibilities for our company data and our customer data.
Acceptance. Maybe this isn't so bad. Most of our employees are actually pretty reasonable about taking measured steps like using VPNs and setting a password once I explained why it's so important. In fact, they're even OK with installing profiles that enforce some of those rules. And they get that I can't offer official support for stuff they buy on their own. I wonder if I can start getting out of supporting PCs too?

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