CIO Mag - Decision Evolution
A couple of different riffs on this
article by Davenport.
- A lot easier said than done - it's still kind of difficult
to design systems that truly are "intelligent", capable of making
"decisions". There is still a lot of art, insight, etc. that is
captured by the way the solution is architected / designed - and it's
that gray area of "knowledge engineering" that you need to capitalize
on. Work on elegant, sustainable, flexible, and cheap ways
of encoding solutions.
- He talks about the changing work environment, and how
different types of knowledge workers are being displaced. Don't think
about simple value-added; think rather about complex
value-added, and differentiate yourself along those lines. Don't
merely be good at translating and computing stuff that can be done by
anybody - be the one to tackle the tougher problems (the ones that
are tougher to automate <g>).
- He's talking more about subject matter expertise, I'm
talking more about methodology expertise. Of course, this also
requires a high degree of self-marketing. Most people are very
comfortable slotting people into a single specific type of expertise
- craftsman, artist ... and even computer programmer. Some "old
world" corporate cultures (I'm giving away my preference here) are
not comfortable dealing eith the generalist.
- I often sense a difference in the way large corporations
deal with concepts like this, vs. smaller corporations (think Fortune
500 vs. SMBs). Most big trade rags, MBA classes, op ed pieces speak
from a large corporate bias - my opinion, yes, but I've seen
small, medium, and large businesses. My point, however,
is that for SMBs on down, there is still much opportunity for IT,
especially as the radical new technolgies contnue to get chearper to
implement. This, of course, matches up against that pressure of
shrinking budgets ...