Justifying the installation of utility applications on company laptop

Question

My employer currently has a strict SOE (Standard Operating Environment) policy for company computers. This means that all software installation on my work laptop must be approved, and group policy is set up so that as a user I'm blocked from installing applications on my computer.

I want to justify the installation of utility applications such as Notepad++, WinGrep and WinMerge which I find very useful. These utilities are much better than default apps which come built-in with windows.

In addition, I want to drive company IT culture away from the "one size fits all" mentality that currently pervades.

What advice do you have for:

1. Justifying the apps I've mentioned; and
2. Moving the culture away from the one size fits all so that users can install apps we find useful to our work.

Thanks.

Answer 1

If your company has an IT department that has open-minded IT people, your request and justification should not be difficult. However, since this is a strict policy, you should do everything formally such as making a proposal.

Regarding your first question, you should cite some examples of applications that you request to be allowed. Discuss their features and the benefit of using them. Don't forget to point out that these apps promote ease of use and help you with your job drastically. Be creative in choosing your adverbs and adjectives for persuasion.

If they ask, "Don't you have any alternatives?", it is then within your knowledge on how to defend that. We don't know what's currently installed in your machines.

Regarding your second question, this is quite tough to change, especially if the company is composed of closed-minded, senior people who do not want to entertain changes. What you can do is to make a history review of the company on why they intended to implement such thing. From there, plan out on how you can outsmart them with their implementation. One size fits all is not always beneficial. That's a fact.

Your second mission could be a long one. You should start with your first mission to establish evidences that these apps really could be useful. If you have already proven your point, then finishing your second mission would be easier. However, changing a culture is a herculean task.

Answer 2

When your organization has a strict Standard Operating Environment policy, then you should go through the formal channels to have your tools added to that environment.

Make a formal proposal through the proper channel to add these tools to the SOE.

Common reasons not to add tools to a SOE are:

• They add maintainance overhead. In organisations with an SOE policy, there is usually one department responsible for keeping all software up-to-date and trigger automatic updates on the client machines. The more software they have in their portfolio, the more work they have with that. Software might be incompatible with other software, so the effort of maintaining the portfolio grows quadratically. To negate these concerns, explain how these applications don't need to be updated constantly, that not updating them immediately is not that big of a problem and that they usually play well with any other software installed on the system.
• They might compromise security. One important argument for SOE policies is that they prevent employees from installing software which might be backdoored, contain malware or might be unsafe to use for some other reason. These concerns might be alleviated by pointing out that these are widely-used open source tools.