Re:Software horror show: SAP Concur
by madaxe_again on Saturday January 07, 2023 @05:48AM
(#34286958)
I’ve spent too long over the years working with businesses who use SAP to not get a clear picture of how it works there.
They are an extremely formulaic organisation. Progression paths are clearly defined, and practically everything is run by a management system. This sounds good, in principal, and does result in a general baseline of reliability.
The flip side of this is that everyone is promoted to the limit of their competence, product development and implementation are rapidly spinning revolving doors, from top to bottom, and roles, not people, own products and decisions.
The result is a sort of methodical malcoordination, and seemingly insane decisions being taken at every juncture - unless you view them all through the lens of an emergent process driven by a simple set of rules and constraints: cover your ass, don’t do it if it isn’t explicitly ordered, always follow the management system.
It’s terrible. It’s just that it’s very reliably terrible, and that has its own appeal to other reliably terrible corporations. It’s all minmax, least worst, etc. - quality does not matter in the corporate world - consistency does.
They are an extremely formulaic organisation. Progression paths are clearly defined, and practically everything is run by a management system. This sounds good, in principal, and does result in a general baseline of reliability.
The flip side of this is that everyone is promoted to the limit of their competence, product development and implementation are rapidly spinning revolving doors, from top to bottom, and roles, not people, own products and decisions.
The result is a sort of methodical malcoordination, and seemingly insane decisions being taken at every juncture - unless you view them all through the lens of an emergent process driven by a simple set of rules and constraints: cover your ass, don’t do it if it isn’t explicitly ordered, always follow the management system.
It’s terrible. It’s just that it’s very reliably terrible, and that has its own appeal to other reliably terrible corporations. It’s all minmax, least worst, etc. - quality does not matter in the corporate world - consistency does.