Should Enterprise IT Offer a “Dollar Menu”?

It seems that there is still so much friction in the request and fulfillment of IT services. Need a quick task tracking website? That’ll take a change request, project manager, pair of business analysts, a few 3rd party developers and a test team. Want a report to replace your Excel workbook pivot charts? Let’s ramp up a project to analyze the domain and scope out a big BI program. Should enterprise IT departments offer a “dollar menu” instead of selling all their service as expensive hamburgers?

To be sure, there are MANY times when you need the rigor that IT departments seem to relish. Introducing large systems or deploying a master data management strategy both require significant forethought and oversight to ensure success. There are even those small projects that have broader impacts and require the ceremony of a full IT team. But wouldn’t enterprise IT teams be better off if they had offered some quick-value services delivered by a SWAT team of highly trained resources?

My company recently piloted a “walk up” IT services center where anyone can walk in and have simple IT requests fulfilled. Need a new mouse? Here you go. Having problems with your laptop OS? We’ll take a look. It’s awesome. No friction, and dramatically faster than opening a ticket with a help desk and waiting 3 days to hear something back. It’s the dollar menu (simple services, no frills) vs. the expensive burger (help desk support).

Why shouldn’t other IT (software) services work this way? Need a basic website that does simple data collection? We can offer up to 32 man hours to do the work. Need to securely exchange data with a partner? Here’s the accelerated channel through a managed file transfer product. So what would it require to do this? Obviously full support from IT leaders, but also, you probably need a strong public/private Platform-as-a-Service environment, a good set of existing (web) services, and a mature level of IT automation. You’d also likely need a well documented reference architecture so that you don’t constantly reinvent the wheel on topics like identity management, data access, and the like.

Am I crazy? Is everyone else already doing this? Do you think that there should be a class of services on the “menu” that people can order knowing full well that the service is delivered in a fast,  but basic fashion? What else would be on that list?