It’s 8:22 a.m. when this IT pilot fish gets a call from a user: An important report is due by 9 a.m., with major repercussions if it isn’t run on time — but there’s no one around who knows how to do it.

“She said the usual person who pulled the report was out that day, and the backup person was out sick,” says fish. “She was calling for directions on how to do this. Since she had done this half a decade before, she thought she could just pick it up and run with it.

“Except the report was native to that department only, and IT hadn’t run it before or even seen the report for well over five years.

“And the caller hadn’t run the report herself for more than five years, and the process for doing it had changed in the interim.

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