What the IT Industry
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Preoccupied by how technology works the IT industry has never developed practical knowledge of how information works, assuming without question ... or evidence ... that standard practice IT is good information management. It is not! |
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We feel the pain but don't easily see the cause because success is measured by how we use technology, not by how we use information (like judging a house by how we use a saw instead of by how we use lumber). |
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Assuming knowledge of information we have never developed, we plan poor information management and don't know it, perpetually reinventing half-measure solutions for some information functions while others have never been addressed. |
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Systems provide the least informational benefits ... the least business benefits ... at the highest cost. |
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Some fifty years after the introduction of computers information concepts and practices are still based on and assume pre-computer pencil and paper technology. Systems and tools automate pencil and paper and their limitations, not information. Both Information and computers are badly underutilized. |
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No system has ever required we invent a new way to use information. Though information is unique to a particular situation, the same information usages apply to all situations. 'Naming' usage is 'naming' usage whether people or parts. All 'systems' are functionally identical. The difference between one situation and another does not lie in the apparent uniqueness of information, but in how many of which information usages (functions) it takes to inform a situation. Just as all houses are functionally identical with the Instead of providing maximum system benefits by planning open-ended information usage/function, familiar applications such as accounting, payroll, inventory, ERP, CRM, and SAP all apply some combination of the exact same information usages but, due to an endemic failure of concept and imagination, impose artificial limits on them to fit specific circumstances. This assures we never manage information to its full potential. Every system is a reinvention of universal information usages with business paying to do exactly what it has paid for before because the information, but not the usage, is different. The conventional approach to systems is like buying This is why information management costs so much, requires so many people and systems, is hard to manage, and why it never quite gets it right. It is why today's ballyhooed solution becomes tomorrow's vexing problem. |
Information technology is based almost entirely on how technology works with little knowledge, interest, or expertise applied to how information works. The typical IT practitioner has considerable skill with the ‘computer-saw’ but knows little about ‘information-lumber;’ not really even knowing enough to know what they don’t know.
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Because the IT industry doesn't really understand information:
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IT products and practices have never been tested as to whether they constitute good information management (they do not). |
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IT perspectives are quaintly naive, having more in common with alchemy or flat-earth thinking than with managing information effectively. |
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IT practitioners are unwittingly trained to expedite information problems, not to solve them. |
Most IT products and practices wouldn't even be necessary if we managed information effectively. But we don't and don't know it, trapping both users and practitioners in a self-deceiving, self-perpetuating problem. We do system the way we do because we manage information poorly, and we manage information poorly because we do systems the way we do.
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Judging success by how we use technology instead of by how we use information ignores the fact that, despite advancing technology, system informability is steadily getting worse as a direct consequence of our distracted preoccupation with technology. We design, re-design, and re-re-re-design systems to accommodate changing technology rather than to maximize information possibilities and potential.
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Efficiency improves, providing an illusion of success. |
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Functionality deteriorates, but we have neither the knowledge nor criteria for judging it. |
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Costs sky-rocket. |
Despite our intent conventional application software (e.g. accounting, inventory, ERP, CRM, etc.) doesn't solve information problems but compensates for our persistent failure to develop full information functionality. We will continue to manage information badly until we learn to judge IT by information criteria instead of the misguided and misguiding technology criteria accepted by tradition.
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