Communicating with the It Department

What is the best way to communicate with the Information Technology (IT) department? In this paper, we will look at two IT personnel and comparre communication styles. The most effective way to present this scenario is to engage you, the reader, in a mock computer/network crisis in your company.

For many years communicating with the IT department was not a priority. Most businesses used computers for word processing and simple spreadsheets. Networks were stations on the televisions and there was very little to no dependence on a computer system. The hardware was costly and the support was virtually non-existent (www.microsoft.com-small business solutions, 1998).

Today, hardware is affordable and support is abundant. With these major changes businesses are upgrading and installing complete network systems with multi-site databases and very complex Intranets. Along with the systems comes the support. The options are to have an outside firm support the system or an onsite/internal IT Department.

Either option a company chooses will require constant communication with the people in these areas and these people are a different breed of communicators.

The typical IT person is computer literate and usually very intelligent. They have incredible deductive reasoning and superior computational abilities. Most of them are very introverted and have little or no social graces, not to