Bravo, Majola. This tension between BPR and LO is one of the threads
I want to explore. I agree that BPR and LO are at opposite ends of
the structured-unstructured spectrum. However, I do not agree that
this means they cannot or should not be linked.
I've just read Kevin Kelly's book Out of Control which explores the
fusion of "the born" and "the made". Kelly gives serious attention
to a world in which engineering gives way to evolution. We become
gardeners, designing our systems, planting seeds, watering, tending.
We give up control to gain complexity.
I like your reduction of my three-way issue into a two-way: IT/LO
versus IT/BPR. As an IT professional, it is clear to me that
enlightened organizations are now practicing IT and BPR as a single
discipline. As practice fields mature, IT and LO may similarly
merge.
Prior to joint IT/BPR practice, IT was only able to produce
monolithic applications which mirrored the organizational stovepipes.
Then we discovered that we should not be designing applications, but
the entire enterprise. Maybe the next step is to say that we should
not be designing at all. If LO is "the born" and BPR is "the made",
how will we fuse them? Imagine that our LO practice field games are
refined and embellished and become BPR models and finally enterprise
software. And at no stage do you lose the ability to play the game!
Doug Simpson
Doug.Simpson@dot.state.ga.us
--Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>