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I agree that the "holy wars" are totally couterproductive. At my last
job, we moved from Macs to PCs. The move was inititated by a department
request for more resources - they just wanted better Macs. Management
decided to go to a single platform and, since it was an engineering
company, everyone but pubs was using PCs. We spent countless hours with
whining, threats to leave (no one did that) and cries that productivity
would come to a complete halt while people had to learn new tools and
threats that dire consequences would come about because PC files crash
too much. The only one that actually came true was the loss of
productivity - and that wasn't near as bad as folks had predicted. Once
the whining stopped, people learned the new tools - some even came to
say that the PC was better in many ways. (No, I do not mean to start a
war here - my position was and remains that I can produce documentation
on either a Mac or a PC. The tool does not create the documentation - I
do that.) Holy wars come about because people get comfortable with a
single tool - times they are a changing. We gotta change with them.
Then I gave my regular line about technology holy wars: holy wars are
destructive to an organization. They cause people to waste time on
useless debating and arguing. Moreover, a holy warn can divide a team
and cause miscommunication and resentment. This leads to bad products
and lost profits. My suggestion was to deal with the instigators very
sternly. The company must make it clear that the personal opinions
regarding technology, however well supported, are to be kept personal
once a decision is made.
