Joe is out of the Office.

It's Thursday afternoon - the deadline for submitting that management report is drawing close. But just in this moment, the IT system is not working. As always - when you need to do something important. "System Maintenance" the message says in capital red letters when Lisa looks at her screen. Damn you IT. Can't they do that on the weekend?

Lisa is calling Tom. She has to hand in that report in time - otherwise the consequences will be disastrous. She might be losing her face in front of management. "Tom?" - "Hi Lisa, what can I do for you?" - "Hi Tom, I am having trouble with that IT system again. Didn't you know that guy, you know the one who always fixes things quickly?" - "Ah, you mean Joe. Sure let me send you his contact details." Tom hangs up.

The phone is ringing. Lisa has tried it now for the third time. No mailbox, no one is picking up. Joe appears to be offline on the instant messengers as well. Maybe he will react to email. "If I put in a red exclamation mark, that should catch his attention.", Lisa thinks.

Email sent. A few seconds later, an automated reply bounces back:

"Joe is out of the Office."

Out of the office? Who is Joe's proxy? There has to be another "Joe" who can fix this. This does not look good. What will her manager think of Lisa if she does not hand in that report on time? She does not want to think about it.

She hits "Refresh". Sometimes that works miracles.

Still "System Maintenance". This is bad.

Joe certainly has a manager. Lisa just needs to call him to "escalate" matters. Surely, he can make Joe fix this. Let's see. Here we go. Jack is Joe's supervisor.

The phone rings, once, twice. "Hello, this is Jack, IT department lead. Who am I talking to?" - "Eh, hello Sir, this is Lisa from Controlling." - "How can I help you, Lisa?"

Lisa gives Jack the entire story - about how the IT system is never working when she needs it and how Joe is not reachable to support her. Jack listens very closely, silently nodding on the other end. This is at least, what Lisa assumes he does. After a long moment of silence Jack replies:

"Lisa, you see - back in the good old days as we still had 20 employees and we were all sitting in the same office, I did Joe's job. I was always there to help people with their, you know printers, devices and all their software. One IT person for 19 colleagues and let me tell you: It was tough. As we grew to 200 and eventually 2,000, IT had to pull a few new tricks in order to scale, since our department grew to only 10 people."

Lisa is listening. 10 IT people for 2,000 users. Hmmm. What is he getting at? Can he help her or not - and what about Joe? Lisa snaps out of her thoughts while Jack continues:

"We have established a lot of processes and IT governance to streamline and regulate everything. At the same time, we tried to enable users at scale by deploying easy to use web applications with intelligent user interfaces, enabling self service - so that people like Joe would be less and less required."

But now Joe is needed. Damn it! This is unacceptable. Lisa is losing her patience.

"But...!", Jack ignores her:

"We also documented everything and tried to communicate service disruptions like system maintenance events well ahead."

Jack was right - that system maintenance. Lisa remembers that there was indeed an announcement email - about two weeks ago. Second reminder? Hmmm, quite possible. Maybe those IT guys do their job after all. Lisa hears Jack still talking on the other end. When will he finish? Joe is supposed to fix this. She cannot lose her face.

"...you see Lisa after coordinating the migration and automating everything on our end, Jack left for his well deserved vacation."

Vacation! Unbelievable. It is her face on the line.

"But who can help me then?" Lisa is close to tears.

"You can help yourself. After the system maintenance which will be finished in less than two hours, you can log back into the system and download that report." - "Really?" - "Yes, everything has been taken care of. If you had used our ticket system or had read our newsletter with the maintenance schedule you would be aware of that. Also the documentation states that ..."

"OK, thank you Jack, I got it."

What a relief! She can begin to work in two hours. Not so bad, after all. "Ha!", Lisa thinks, "I did it without you, Joe!" That self-service idea is not so bad after all. And what did Jack say about scaling IT? This might make sense.

Only one more hour, then she really has to get to work. After having all this trouble with IT, Lisa's conscience pricked her. Indeed, she procrastinated a lot on this report. After all, there were so many other things to do. Also, Lisa deserved the weekend in the sun to go to the Biergarten.

She looks at her screen again. It still shows Joe's OOTO message. She scrolls down to find two more lines of text.

"In case of any questions, please contact Jack."

"P.S.: Keep in mind: A lack of planning on your side does not lead to an emergency on our side."

Three Months later...

Lisa didn't lose her face despite handing in the report too late. Instead, she got a promotion.

After telling her supervisor about the idea of how using more self service and less calling this world's Joes could save several thousand dollars per year for the company, she was immediately charged with implementing the proposal. With the help of Jack, she pulled it off in record time. Now, it was Jack who was on well deserved vacation.

What if Joe had indeed been there to answer her call? Lisa doesn't want to think about it. Instead she focuses on enjoying a well deserved cocktail in the Biergarten. Cheers!

Have you met Joe? Maybe she is called Jane.

7 out of 10 Joes/Janes are not on vacation. Most probably, 4 are suffering from a psychological condition close to burnout, 3 have already quit their job. Think about it during your next encounter with IT. Joe and Jane always try to be there to help this world's Lisas and Toms, but in the end only self-service and documentation will truly scale in large enterprises.

Help your IT department to scale, read the documentation, give feedback on it and use self services responsibly before calling Joe/Jane. Thank you ??

This story is based on fictional characters, departments and events and is neither aiming to victimize IT nor to criticize business departments. It was written to foster collaboration between the two and to remind people that we should empower our users by finding smart ways to scale efficiently - your feedback is crucial in that process!

IT is there to empower you. Act responsibly with that power.

There is no room for Hey Joe IT? in large enterprises.