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Sometimes 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.
Like an artist who gets a contract to paint a house for a client but when (s)he arrives half the canvas is already wrecked by an offshore team... this is why teams have to put SWE candidates through 9 interviews as a single bad hire risks tainting the canvas for their colleagues
But 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?
Sometimes 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.
This is compounded by the process being automated being the 'idealised' one - not taking into account the exceptions and variations.
This leads to the 'computer says no' scenario - where people who used to be empowered to fix something can no longer do so because the software doesn't support the operations.
There is also another problem - often during the implementation of the software solution - the administrator type people tend to pile on lots of requirements for recording stuff that was never previously recorded because the metrics might be useful and the new systems creates the opportunity to capture the data.
This creates extra busy work at best - classic example is timesheets - most data entry into company timesheets ( unless you are the sort of company that charges by the hour ) - is a work of fiction.
Even worse the 'data' gives upper management the feeling that they can make decisions on the data without talking to those middle managers who actually know what's going up. As a result it leads to poor decision making and an increasing breakdown of trust.
It's amazing how much money senior management will spend on an IT system, a sink costs into data entry, in order to avoid a 5 minute conversation with somebody.
Sometimes 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.
Indeed. This is compounded by the process being automated being the 'idealised' one - not taking into account the exceptions and variations. This leads to the 'computer says no' scenario - where people who used to be empowered to fix something can no longer do so because the software doesn't support the operations. There is also another problem - often during the implementation of the software solution - the administ…
Too often, the focus is on what computers do best only.
If IT investment brings low to no returns, what are we to make of the universal embrace of IT by the markets and absolutely humongous valuations and profits of the big tech? Are the markets being irrational for the last 50 years?
If IT investment brings low to no returns, what are we to make of the universal embrace of IT by the markets and absolutely humongous valuations and profits of the big tech? Are the markets being irrational for the last 50 years?
Sometimes 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.
Indeed. This is compounded by the process being automated being the 'idealised' one - not taking into account the exceptions and variations. This leads to the 'computer says no' scenario - where people who used to be empowered to fix something can no longer do so because the software doesn't support the operations. There is also another problem - often during the implementation of the software solution - the administ…
On the contrary, generally tools such as Workday support a generally ideal workflow, but buyers spend years "integrating" aka devolving that workflow to mimic the manual toil of before the tool, including often unnecessary exceptions and variations.
The end result is often strictly worse, as the flow did not improve and now there are even more human (error prone) steps and more technical parts to break.
The main curse as an IC is that your productivity is heavily dependent on outside forces - more so than many other industries imo (or, at least, would be more easily recognized as a management level problem elsewhere) Like an artist who gets a contract to paint a house for a client but when (s)he arrives half the canvas is already wrecked by an offshore team... this is why teams have to put SWE candidates through 9 i…