Historically, IT departments have been hesitant to cede power and control to other parts of the business. While it may be a support function, the stereotype persists of a team which regards its colleagues as unqualified or incapable of doing things for themselves. And when the business impact of getting things wrong could mean the risk of a serious security or compliance breach, it’s hard to argue otherwise.

Yet, in a typical startup, IT teams are often too small to handle day-to-day tasks and  strategic, high-value initiatives. Much of their work is toilsome and repetitive. Why not hand this off to automated tooling where possible and empower end users?

This is where self-service comes into its own. AccessOwl recently sat down with some expert IT practitioners to understand why self-service is the future, and how to get there.

Documentation is king

One of the biggest draws of self-service is reducing pressure on the service desk, according to Picus Security IT Engineer Emre Kurt.

“My main idea was to create a documentation space so that people can do some easy things by themselves, like resetting a password,” he says. “Whenever someone needs something, I'm guiding them to that support portal. People can find articles there that I wrote, about very specific things that they may need to know.”

Documentation is a recurring theme among the experts AccessOwl interviewed. It’s also cited by an IT manager at a tech company as key to success.

“I've been building a lot of guides and the leadership loves my approach to teaching people how to use them,” he says.

However, this IT manager explains that when this kind of self-service approach involves automation, employees may need to be reassured that technology will not ultimately usurp their role.

“It’s about saying ‘look, we're not replacing you. This is actually a good thing because you can focus on these other things, and you're not having to wait for IT to get back to you,” he says. “All we have to do is go in and clean up all the things that are not done by automation, and then it's ready to go within half an hour.”

In this way, self-service can save end users time in the long run, even though it is handing them more work, because with the right tools they can bypass a potential IT bottleneck.

“I Like getting people into the mindset of the lowest-impact solution; the solution that causes the least impact on your daily work and productivity,” Erik says. “So what is that solution? Let's work towards it, and let me train you up and show you how it works.”

Financial and operational benefits

Journee Senior IT Administrator Syed Faizan Ul Haq also believes good documentation is foundational to effective self-service initiatives. He sees it as essential for many startups that don’t have the resources to fund large IT departments.

“Delegating tasks is very important if a company has 400 users but just three IT people. Those three should create an ecosystem where people can get the answers they need without creating a ticket or support request,” he says. “The documentation should be very precise and straightforward and reflect the culture of the company and the top 10 pain points users are facing every day.”

Ul Haq envisions a self-service portal where users can type their problem in plain English and receive relevant documentation automatically. IT staff would then be on hand to assist if that first attempt at self-service fails.

Encouraging employees to handle  more IT admin themselves is not just a good idea financially, but also makes sense operationally and from a user experience perspective, according to Khoi Pham, IT and Compliance Lead at Coda.  

“We live in 2024 and most people prefer to not talk to anyone to get their work done, if they can. So if you provide people with self-serve options and you find ways to reinforce the usage of that, it can eliminate the grunt work while also empowering your employee base,” he says.

“It also kills two birds with one stone because you're decreasing your operational risk as you automate. You’re making sure that things don't fall through the cracks, because your processes are more streamlined, and you're not letting people make their own decisions each step of the way and introduce error into the process.”

Chipping away at shadow IT

Self-service exemplifies a shift towards a less cynical and didactic IT culture than has historically been the norm, whereby employees are trusted to take on certain administrative tasks themselves and proactively solve problems with the technologies they're using. For one IT manager, this notion of empowerment can be expanded by IT leaders to help erode shadow IT within the organization.

“Why are we trying to hold the power from them? They're going to try to use these systems no matter what, whether we make rules and try to block them or not. So why don't we work with them to make it work?” he says. “IT’s ultimate purpose is to ensure that people are using technology correctly, appropriately and responsibly and that they’re being productive. That’s why we exist, and empowerment is a central part of that.”

Exactly how empowered IT leaders want to make their employees will vary from organization to organization. But at the very least, delegating routine tasks to end users and automation benefits both IT and employee productivity.