Silver Bullet Syndrome
I've noticed a trend in my current organization which I'm sure is common to many companies. I'm having a hard time defining it, but let's call it "Silver Bullet Syndrome"... where when faced with some business problem, companies immediately look for an off the self (OTS) technology solution - many times without understanding the full scope of the problem. The OTS solution is viewed as a "Silver Bullet" and will immediately solve all of the organization's woes. Now I'm not saying all off the shelf software is bad, but often times these business problems are not generic enough to be addressed by a general solution. The lack of flexibility of many OTS solutions compounds the problem, forcing companies to modify business processes or requirements to meet the capabilities of the tool instead of the other way around. Once the tool is in place however, another problem manifests itself. This often starts with a management mandate like, "OK n