What is it called when end users write their own applications?
No punchline, just google is failing me and I need to update policy to include this more directly than it being with just vague Dev team policy.
In more context I mean the common situation where, as an IT admin or manager, you end up finding shadow IT (unmanaged/unregulated software) on a system that was written, usually very poorly, by an end user to automate and aid some of their own tasks. Generally you'll find these large vbscript monsters, monolithic Frankensteins of python, or the occasional java goblin only when a separate user comes to you (after the original author left the company) asking for IT support on said code chimera.
Now this underlying situation always has me on the fence. I am happy to support innovation by creative users in the workplace. If someone has the talent and the vision to create something that improves the workflow of a department, that is a wonderful thing. At the same time, the code is written and tested outside the bounds of coding best practices and comes with all the risk inherent with that. Even more so, since the code is almost always written by curious novices, it is usually very poorly written and thus takes on more and more technical debt the longer it goes without being reported. This may seem harmless because the coding work by the user isn't interrupting anyone's day; however, every poorly written line is a debt that will have to be remedied in the future. A debt taken out on other departments without their say so. As a result one day the company may have to hire contractors to come in and just focus on rewriting your code because it somehow became a core component of operation without any maintenance or care being given to it.
For these reasons I believe all departments should have policy sections dedicated to this phenomenon and is why I'm updating my own policy. Just need to find a better name for it than "jankware" since that doesn't look great in internal policy docs. That and I wanted to get a bit of that frustration off my chest.
That said, maybe I'm just unlucky in finding this in most companies and this is actually a rare thing that never happens. Am I alone in experiencing office jankware?
No punchline, just google is failing me and I need to update policy to include this more directly than it being with just vague Dev team policy.
In more context I mean the common situation where, as an IT admin or manager, you end up finding shadow IT (unmanaged/unregulated software) on a system that was written, usually very poorly, by an end user to automate and aid some of their own tasks. Generally you'll find these large vbscript monsters, monolithic Frankensteins of python, or the occasional java goblin only when a separate user comes to you (after the original author left the company) asking for IT support on said code chimera.
Now this underlying situation always has me on the fence. I am happy to support innovation by creative users in the workplace. If someone has the talent and the vision to create something that improves the workflow of a department, that is a wonderful thing. At the same time, the code is written and tested outside the bounds of coding best practices and comes with all the risk inherent with that. Even more so, since the code is almost always written by curious novices, it is usually very poorly written and thus takes on more and more technical debt the longer it goes without being reported. This may seem harmless because the coding work by the user isn't interrupting anyone's day; however, every poorly written line is a debt that will have to be remedied in the future. A debt taken out on other departments without their say so. As a result one day the company may have to hire contractors to come in and just focus on rewriting your code because it somehow became a core component of operation without any maintenance or care being given to it.
For these reasons I believe all departments should have policy sections dedicated to this phenomenon and is why I'm updating my own policy. Just need to find a better name for it than "jankware" since that doesn't look great in internal policy docs. That and I wanted to get a bit of that frustration off my chest.
That said, maybe I'm just unlucky in finding this in most companies and this is actually a rare thing that never happens. Am I alone in experiencing office jankware?
