Re:The Art of Automation
by ethbr0 on Monday September 28, 2020 @03:28AM
(#24613936)
So, there's something of a story behind this.
To simplify things, the early phase you mentioned is simply computing, and has been proceeding since the 1960s. The latter phase is called business process management (aka BPM) [1] and has been a thing since ~1980(?).
In promise, BPM says "Encode all your business processes and their relationships into our tool, and we'll optimize and automate them." In practice, BPM is doomed to failure because (1) it's invariably implemented in an organization by management consultant types who care more about billable hours than actual solutions & (2) it's fundamentally an imperfect abstraction over your actual business processes, leading to leaks / hacks in implementation, leading to yet another system that further slows down the business.
SAP is illustrative here, with the adage that smart businesses change their business to fit SAP, rather than try to change SAP to fit their business.
To simplify things, the early phase you mentioned is simply computing, and has been proceeding since the 1960s. The latter phase is called business process management (aka BPM) [1] and has been a thing since ~1980(?).
In promise, BPM says "Encode all your business processes and their relationships into our tool, and we'll optimize and automate them." In practice, BPM is doomed to failure because (1) it's invariably implemented in an organization by management consultant types who care more about billable hours than actual solutions & (2) it's fundamentally an imperfect abstraction over your actual business processes, leading to leaks / hacks in implementation, leading to yet another system that further slows down the business.
SAP is illustrative here, with the adage that smart businesses change their business to fit SAP, rather than try to change SAP to fit their business.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_process_management