When is the best time to disrupt users from their routine and make broad changes?
I’m a newly-appointed SA, and I’ve jumped into an environment where half the people run with Administrative privileges on the domain. This is obviously problematic for me, but it’s also something which can not be fixed in one fell swoop, as there is a lot of single-use, special-use proprietary software on the network which (just as often as not) does not aid itself to a multiuser environment. I really need to get this fixed, but in order to do so, we’re talking about a couple hundred pissed off people at a time. I’m currently already operating in a “scramble to fix this or that problem, and hope for a moment to work on a project” mode due to how the network was left for me, and I have experience with such changes on (much) smaller networks and know how disruptive a seemingly “small” change can be, and I don’t relish the eventuality of such an event!
We’ve also got a fairly large building project going where a large percentage of the users will be moving to another facility, and I thought then might be the best time to attempt such a change; things are already disrupted, so what’s one more thing, right? I know some people in my position would be tempted to blame it on an external force outside my control, or blame such a change on the move, but I’m not so sure I want to do that.
So, whether it’s a large hardware upgrade, workstation upgrade, move from workstations to thin clients – when, and how, is the best way to do it?
I’d appreciate any and all of your thoughts on the matter.