Let’s Go Back To 1985. – `Shangrila’


Let us go back to 1985. Am I being conservative? Do I dislike IT? Definitely not. I am neither conservative nor am I anti-IT. I love technology. Basically, I am an engineer. I admire the capabilities that technology brings in. What I would have appreciated is proper harnessing the technology. Instead, the technology has been let to mess up every business process resulting in the chaos that business world is in today.

Why 1985? Why not 1980? Or 1990? Why not? The reason I say 1985 because, it is around that time a paradigm shift took place in the field of business data processing. Until then, computer was just a computing machine. A few processes like sorting, collating and tabulating were done with computers apart from large volume computing. Come 1985, that is around that time, computer became IT machine. More process computing began to happen. Then came the unthinkable, what should not have happened. IT became the process. Total subjugation of business. Abject surrender by business to IT. Business was willing to use IT, but never tried to understand IT. IT never bothered to understand business. Why would they? They became the dictators. Dictating how business process should be. I would be dealing with this aspect in depth in the next 2 postings.

So, what am I prescribing? I am prescribing that we use the technology and all those amazing capabilities that it offers as an enabling tool only. Not as the process itself. Let us ignore the mess that has happened in the information side of IT in last 3 odd decades. Let us start afresh with our business processes the way we used to approach automation till 1985. Business used to own the business processes. The business executives were clear as to what they wanted. They were clear about the changes that they wanted. They knew the reasons why changes needed to be effected. They would never let others to tinker with their systems. If they felt that EDP (Electronic Data Process Department, that was how IT was called then) can provide a capability to enhance business capability, they would enlist the support of EDP. Then the business manager would head the discussions as to how to use the EDP to address his requirements. The business manager would consult every stakeholder, particularly the last mile stakeholder. EDP would understand the requirement from business’s perspective. EDP would draw the flow chart of the process and present it to the business executive. Only after both have agreed on the requirement, would the coding start. This is all Enterprise Architecture. I agree that IT had not become a commodity then, that it is today. I agree that commoditising IT has resulted in the conundrum. Even that could have been managed better, had business not abdicated it’s roll completely. If only IT guys were not made demi gods. That, they are not even by long stretch. If only the abilities of IT guys (fantastic they were) were harnessed properly (unlike the headless chickens that they were made to). If only top management had adopted the practice of enterprise architecture. The change management would have been proper. No new system would have come in without proper analysis about its need, desirability, existence of system already which would address need, would have considered the concerns of all business stakeholders, consulted them. We would be having working systems today.

So, let us go back to 1985. Redesign our systems adopting Enterprise Architecture. Let the business processes be designed by business. Let the management start to govern. Let us accept that there is no governance today. By out-sourcing governance to auditors from ISO 9000, COBIT, Six Sigma and so on managements are checking the check box. THAT DEFINITELY IS NOT GOVERNANCE.

 

 


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