Standardization is KING! What IT can learn from Southwest Airlines...

This blog post started out small then turned into a giant brain dump on standardization.  Hope it's helpful ... Enjoy! :-)

IT can glean valuable lessons about hardware standardization from an unlikely source: Southwest Airlines, one of the most consistently successful and profitable airlines in an otherwise struggling industry. Unlike some of its troubled competitors, Southwest only buys one kind of plane (the Boeing 737), which means that Southwest’s planes are interchangeable when problems occur. Pilots and mechanics need to be trained for only one kind of “hardware,” and tools and spare parts are transferable across all the planes in the fleet. I bet some of the pilots might prefer to fly an Airbus A320, but the benefits of standardization for Southwest as a company outweigh the personal preferences of individual employees. The same logic applies to standardizing end-user hardware in corporate IT.  read entire article

Anyone that knows me probably knows I’m a huge proponent of standardization.  It was my 1st and main objective when I started at GCC in 2003, I’ve blogged about it, and talked it up any chance I get.  It was also one of the main topics I landed on in my all staff presentation in 2008 that received great feedback ... even from our exec pastor Tim Stevens.

I was reminded of just how sweet standardization is again last Monday night…

I got a text message from my boss, Kem Meyer, around 9pm that her laptop wouldn’t power on.  I texted back a couple things for her to try (remove batts, unplug power, press power button, plug in power, press power button) and then report back results.  She reported back same results.  I could tell she was stressing about this, while in my head I figured it was most likely a dead motherboard…"no biggie" I'm thinking.

Since we were working late Monday night and she lives very close, I asked her to bring her laptop over to GCC and we’d fix it up quickly.  She brought the laptop to us, we quickly pulled her hard drive and swapped it into another Dell Latitude D830 (we always keep at least 1 spare around for just this reason).  Powered the spare laptop on and taa daa she was back in business!  Had we not had a spare D830 one of my team would have donated our D830 to the cause … we’re nice like that :-)

I have many other stories about how standardization “saved the day” over the past 6 years like …

… Minutes before a presentation someone spilled a 32oz Mt. Dew on their Dell D600 laptop which of course fried it.  I quickly put their hard drive in my D600 and the presentation went off as scheduled.

… A staff member was at a multi-day conference in CA when their laptop hard drive died.  We took a fully functioning spare laptop, copied their files to that hard drive off the network file server and overnighted it to her along with a small screw driver (Our Dells have 2 screws to remove the hard drive).  She easily swapped drives and was back in business.

Not only does standardization give us rapid repair ability, it also greatly aids in troubleshooting issues.  You can quickly narrow an issue down to hardware or software by swapping hard drives into a known good laptop or desktop.  That can save a LOT of time!

Standardization also helps greatly with software builds and deployment … of course we’ve found this to be almost a non-issue when deploying windows7 on different hardware.

Naturally, standardization doesn’t happen overnight.  It took a good 3 years before I got GCC to where I was happy.  You just have to keep it elevated as one of your main goals.  In fact, when I started at GCC we had 60ish PC's of all size, age, and flavors ... models from 1997-2003 ... Gateway, Dell, Compaq, IBM, Sony, E-Machines (shudder!) ... Windows 95, 98, 2000, XP ... Office 97, 2000, XP … uggh!

A tool to help achieve quicker standardization is leasing.  Say you’ve got 50 computers that need replacing.  Rather than purchasing say 10 computers each year over 5 years, why not lease 25 each year over 2 years?  Yes, you’ll pay a little extra for them over the life of the lease (always do 3yr $1 buyout) but the ROI is easily justified.  Another option is get a bunch of the same units from http://dfsdirectsales.com  You’ll find LOTS of off lease Dell gear for a great price.  For instance our standard desktop model (Optiplex 745) is only $267 and they have many of them.  They usually will have little to no warranty, so just buy a couple extra as parts donors and you’ll be fine.  The beauty of Dell Optiplex line is that the hardware is very consistent across a model line.  So I can buy an off lease 745 and know it'll be compatible with our current 745’s.

Keeping a spare of each model of laptop/desktop you have in your org is uber helpful, but obviously not always possible. So as long as IT uses the same hardware as your end users then at least you can swap your parts with there’s. Better for IT to be inconvenienced by a computer issue than our end users, right?

What about Macs?  One of the great benefits of Macs is that standardization is already part of the equation since Apple controls 100% of the core hardware sold and there are very few options available.  So since Apple controls both hardware and the operating system you’re in good shape when deploying new OSX versions and updates provided you’re not dealing with both intel and non-intel models.  Hardware swaps are similar to PC’s, but replacing a Mac laptop drive is NOT simple/easy/quick in anything prior to the new uni-body design.  So shouldn’t you just standardize on all Macs?  Umm, there are several big reasons I’d say no from experience, but that’ll have to be another blog post.  I don’t have the time/energy to deal with all the fanboi comments I’m sure that’ll receive ;-)

[update: I failed to mentioned that we DO standardize on Macs for most everything related to audio/video creation and production.  Macs and mac software easily own this niche]

GCC standard Windows hardware since 2004
Desktops
Dell Optiplex GX270 (phased out)
Dell Optiplex GX280 (most of these are now in non-staff non-critical roles)
Dell Optiplex 745 (bought 8/07 to replace all staff GX280 desktops)

Laptops
Dell Latitude D600/610 (phased out)
Dell Latitude D810/830 (810’s mainly phased out)

Due to budget restraints we’ve not ordered any new desktops or laptops since late ‘07 early ‘08.

How long before you replace hardware (aka Lifecycle)?  When talking about standardization the question of lifecycle always comes up.  Several years ago you needed to upgrade hardware often to keep pace with new software versions.  For the most part that is no longer the case.  We’ve found that our 3 and 4 year old desktop hardware will run win7 quite speedy.  So I don’t plan to replace our current Dell 745 desktops anytime soon.  Laptops are another story due to the wear and tear they experience and their lower performance specs.  Our 2+ year old D830 laptops run win7 fine, but they could be more peppy.  The vid cards in older laptops just weren’t made for speed.  That said I’m hopeful we can maintain a 3 year laptop lifecycle.  That’s the end of our warranty period and after 3 years our users have usually thrashed them pretty well :-)  For desktop lifecycle, it’s looking like we can go 4+ years with our current 745’s maybe more…time will be the judge.

Future standardization at GCC?  I’m seriously considering moving all our staff to laptops down the road.  Research shows increased productivity when staff have laptop vs desktop, plus there’s a measurable power savings by not having desktops drawing power when nobody’s around (even if you ask people to power down nightly, often they forget).  So they question is … is the substantial increase in cost and maintenance of laptop vs desktop worth the hoped for increase in staff productivity/efficiency?  And how would you every truly measure that?  Many pros and cons to consider, but I really like the concept :-)

What about standardizing software?  Yup, same logic applies to core software (operating system, version of office productivity suite, etc).  However, all our users are local admin so they have the ability to install additional software which typically IT doesn’t support.  We’re currently running Windows Vista and Office 2007 site wide, however our migration to Windows7 has just started and we’ll do same with Office 2010 once it’s released.

And finally, I leave you again with this snippet from an old article I refer back to anytime this topic comes up … It’s a strong non-IT example that will resonate with upper management if they baulk at the value of standardization ;-)

IT can glean valuable lessons about hardware standardization from an unlikely source: Southwest Airlines, one of the most consistently successful and profitable airlines in an otherwise struggling industry. Unlike some of its troubled competitors, Southwest only buys one kind of plane (the Boeing 737), which means that Southwest’s planes are interchangeable when problems occur. Pilots and mechanics need to be trained for only one kind of “hardware,” and tools and spare parts are transferable across all the planes in the fleet. I bet some of the pilots might prefer to fly an Airbus A320, but the benefits of standardization for Southwest as a company outweigh the personal preferences of individual employees. The same logic applies to standardizing end-user hardware in corporate IT.  read entire article

Comments

[Jeremy Scheller]

We've standardized on MacBooks at Sanctuary. The main easy replace part is hard drives. We've easily swapped drives out, backed up from the latest Time Machine backup and been back up and running in minutes. OSX upgrades are far cheaper than Windows and house of worship discounts and fewer help desk issues have been a huge bonus for us being an all-mac office. I would say that our help desk issues dropped by 75% or more within a few months of converting everyone to macs. Makes my IT life much easier (I say this as an Pseudo IT boy, not just a fanboy).

We're also getting close to phasing out our use of Office for google docs and iWork. Again, the cost is the main issue and people have been reasonably comfortable with the transition.

[Jason Powell]

Thanks for the comment Jeremy. Of course I was hoping for less "macs are better than PC" input, but I knew I'd get some anyways :-)
Come on now, be honest and admit you bleed Apple and have a Steve Jobs tattoo ;-)
I'd argue you would have seen same reduced support requests if you had all new Dell laptops vs macbooks. Anything new and 100% standardized will be a big win over a prior environment be it mac or PC.

I'll be interested to hear how google docs works out for your staff. Several folks I know using it are frustrated by the lack of layout controls. We're using gdocs here at the house and my 11yr old recently said he needed something better. So we installed openoffice and he's happier.

[Jason Powell]

I just updated the blog post ... I failed to mention we DO standardize on Macs for AV creation/production. They own that niche for sure.

[Jeremy Scheller]

Sorry, I really wasn't trying to say Macs are better...really. I can't speak from my own experience without talking about our Mac standardizing transition. Just saying where we landed because we don't have a dedicated IT guy. Other than me of course, and I also run Communication, Web, Media and Bookstore, so you can see how dedicated I am...Mac Standardization has just been far easier for me and has some facets that help make cost differences minimal.

Starting as a designer, I didn't have any PC experience, before inheriting the role of IT. I felt like I was on constant help desk duty with problems that I couldn't solve. So I needed to move people to the macs to get to a place where I could provide solutions. A double-dose of fortunate results happened. The problems that came to me, I could solve. And...a lot fewer problems came to me. Much of the problems revolved around virus/spyware issues which just don't happen on the mac side (for various reasons of course).

Aside from all that though, standardization has dramatically helped. It's so easy to swap things in and out when everybody is on the same macbook. We have a few iMacs that are all the same too, but those are a pain to replace parts in so they get sent out for service.

But, yes, amen to standardizing your machines, PC or Mac. It makes life easier.

[Bob Seymore]

We are in pursuit of ultimate rebellion. We are after complete cloud conversion. We converted domain based google Apps and with event U, Fellowship One, Quickbooks web and worship planning online, a majority of our apps are cloud. We have converted all standard hard drive storage to dropbox. For us platforms and machine issues are neutralized with web connectivity and speed is the goal. I know that is controversial, but we love it and I can buy any machine and connect. Added to the mix is Phone apps for most if these apps including dropbox. We believe churches should be in the clouds.

[Jason Powell]

Jeremy – how many macs do you have? Have you looked at getting Apple self-service certified? Then you can do all the repair stuff in house. I should probably do a blog post on that too :)

Bob - But going cloud doesn’t solve the hardware and operating system issues that standardization addresses. The cloud is just an app. You still need a computer to get to the cloud. Hardware will fail and operating systems will have problems … both can kill access to the cloud. I don’t see how moving into the cloud changes that.

[Scottfillmer]

Great examples on standardizations, I worked for Southwest for several years and standardization with them was not done by accident, SWA was always very determined to make productivity as high as possible and costs as low as possible.

[Scott]

Jason,
Great article and I love the knowledge you share and the IT roundtables you host and encourage! You said you make all users local admin and while we did this in the past we found that we huge amounts of "extra" software being installed that slowed the computers down and such. How do you prevent users from adding those extra features, widgets and such? Thanks and keep up the great work!

[Jason Powell]

ScottF - thanks

Scott - We don't do anything really to prevent a user installing whatever they want. However, they are warned that if they jack up their computer with non-supported software their issue gets low priority and we'll most likely reimage the whole machine if it takes more than 15mins to solve an issue. If you listen to my All Staff presentation audio I address this question more than once :-)
Jason

[Jordan]

Jason, I was wondering if GCC does any standardization for smart phones or cell phones. If you have any details, please let me know.

[Jason Powell]

Jordan - We don't manage or support staff cell phones or plans. What we do tell staff is that we'll help them connect any ActiveSync compatible phone to our Exchange server. After that they're on their own :-)
I think we have 40 iPhones and 4 Pre's hitting our Exchange server.
Jason

[Scottfillmer]

Jason, I was looking into the Apple Certification programs for support and technician for hardware but I am not really all that familiar with their programs. Are they worth the expense? I understand the benefits but trying to quantify them to the church administrator on a cost/benefit it something I am trying to understand myself. The church just wants to make sure they will receive the benefit of having an onsite certified IT person over not (we do have about 80% macs to pc's). Thx. Scott

[Jason Powell]

ScottF - Apple Self Servicing Account info http://www.apple.com/support/programs/ssa/
Cost is only $100-150 for the exam. Because of our location it's hard to get any quick repair service so for us this will be helpful. If you live near an Apple store prob less helpful. Comes down to how long can your mac be down? This is perhaps my MAIN beef with Apple. They have no real enterprise level support. With our Dell gear a tech is onsite next day to replace hardware ... Apple needs to do similar if they truly want into the enterprise market space.
Jason