A 75-person department had a network decoupled from the centralized, corporate IT department. People who were more knowledgeable about the systems did more of the SA duties, and others did less. One semitechnical clerk on staff, named Karen—not her real name—took care of backups and was trained to do most installations and other semiautomated tasks. Nearly every bit of user documentation included the instruction, “Email Karen to get started.” As a result of business changes, the department was eventually required to use the centralized support that other departments in that building used. Customers were frustrated that instead of sending email to Karen, they had to send email to “help.” The personal touch had been lost. Rather than deal with the emotional issue head-on, management simply kept pushing people to use the new process. Karen held a lot of political weight in the department because everyone knew her, and she could spread pessimism effectively if she chose to do so. Because she was not made part of the process but was shoe-horned into it, she felt that she was being pushed out. She eventually quit, and it took a couple of years for the new helpdesk system to be fully accepted by the customers.
The problems could have been prevented if the transition had been handled better, first by understanding what the customers were used to and then by integrating that culture into the new process.