I once saw a project go horribly wrong. It was conceived and implemented without IT approval or recommendations. Not that I'm on a power trip or anything, but IT should sometimes, if not always be included for major projects that will remotely involve stuff plugging in walls.

In this case, it was a major department renovation. At the end of it and 2 days before it was finished they came to us because they needed 8 more ports. The problem? We're a Cisco shop and due to certain compliance and regulation issues we only run Cisco. Due to the number of VLANS and inter department work being done at certain areas, a layer 3 switch was needed. Because of the phones, POE was needed. Because of the GIS applications, gig to the desktop and 10gig uplinks were needed. Now if you've ever priced a 3560-E with the enterprise image, 10 gig uplinks and POE you'll know they are way over $1000 even without SmartNet. Plugging in a cheapo non managed switch just doesn't cut it. I ended up saving their behind by adding in an old 2950 and changing the setup a little bit. Most of the non essential people were moved to the 2950, freeing up the existing 3560 to be used for phones, AP's and the workstations that did the bulk of the resource intensive work. I explained this, and the consequences at great length. Low and behold, two months later the very same non-IT project manager was asking why the GIS apps slowed down on some of the workstations?

Granted, that is an example of bad project management. However, sometimes grey areas can quickly exceed $1000.