The IT Productivity Paradox (2015)
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The IT Productivity Paradox (2015)
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Re: The IT Productivity Paradox (2015)
#2Yes, IT processes significantly differ from those in other areas and can't be evaluated by the same methods - due to the complexities, hidden problems, and overevaluated expectations. For example, the known fact: adding a new member to a team doesn't linearly increase productivity.Nowadays probably AI will help here :)
Re: The IT Productivity Paradox (2015)
#3Yes, IT processes significantly differ from those in other areas and can't be evaluated by the same methods - due to the complexities, hidden problems, and overevaluated expectations. For example, the known fact: adding a new member to a team doesn't linearly increase productivity.Nowadays probably AI will help here :)
> adding a new member to a team doesn't linearly increase productivity
How does that differ from non-IT processes?
Re: The IT Productivity Paradox (2015)
#4Yes, IT processes significantly differ from those in other areas and can't be evaluated by the same methods - due to the complexities, hidden problems, and overevaluated expectations. For example, the known fact: adding a new member to a team doesn't linearly increase productivity.Nowadays probably AI will help here :)
> adding a new member to a team doesn't linearly increase productivity How does that differ from non-IT processes?
Other things can be embarrassing parallel. Teachers for example teach X students each in separate rooms. They need to collaborate sometimes but for the majority of their job they have their own class to teach.
Restaurant staff can also scale like this most likely. Limitations would come from space and available equipment. But this is solvable and why we have McDonalds. etc.
IT is special in having gangs of individual contributors who at some level are like CEOs of the code they create and all the complexity of running a silicon organisation! Every minute is strategy. It is a heavy thinking job.
Re: The IT Productivity Paradox (2015)
#5I think a lot of this is down to too much choice. There are many papers on this in psychology, but for example, from [1]:
"Findings from 3 experimental studies starkly challenge this implicit assumption that having more choices is necessarily more intrinsically motivating than having fewer. These experiments, which were conducted in both field and laboratory settings, show that people are more likely to purchase gourmet jams or chocolates or to undertake optional class essay assignments when offered a limited array of 6 choices rather than a more extensive array of 24 or 30 choices."
More computing power and tools gives us too much choice in how to use the tools: we've got dozens of software packags to choose from for every tasks, dozens of setups, etc. The users (workers) have to constantly choose how to use their tools and which apps to open for the day, etc.
It's the same reason why people love minimalist writing apps. Their computer just presents too many options. Some people have even gone back to typewriters or writing by hand.
Computers aren't really giving us too many benefits. If you closely examine the situations in which computers are purported to improve something, the only thing they ACTUALLY improve in a lot of cases is the advancement of new technology. If you're a programmer or a software company, then new IT is good. But for people just using it as a tool? It sucks.
Re: The IT Productivity Paradox (2015)
#6Paperwork is probably similar. Generally reduces productivity for the individual contributors. But reduces the principal agent problem.
Re: The IT Productivity Paradox (2015)
#7Sometimes in software it's a problem that once a solution is encoded in software by an external party, innovation stops.
People inside the company with domain knowledge and who work with the tool daily cannot contribute anymore.
Re: The IT Productivity Paradox (2015)
#8We now have the equivalent of a TV-set on our desks. What would someone from the 60s think of that?
When I try to look up something for work, I am bombarded with distractions.
Re: The IT Productivity Paradox (2015)
#9But then didn’t productivity sharply increase beginning in the ‘90s? And wasn’t much of that attributed to information technology? I don’t know what I’m supposed to learn from this website if they aren’t willing to compare - am I missing some part where they do this?
Re: The IT Productivity Paradox (2015)
#10Paperwork is probably similar. Generally reduces productivity for the individual contributors. But reduces the principal agent problem.
Good point. Paper, like computers, is generally being used to track all the goings on at a company. Tracking clearly takes up an enormous amount of time, with questionable benefit.