Most design approaches are still based on scientific management – the late 19th/early 20th century thinking that saw the point of organizational change as improving efficiency.
IT does not replace people – it supplements them. It doesn’t get happy, it doesn’t get sad (or bored), it just runs programs. And that is the problem – even AI can’t do things it is not programmed to do. Human beings, on the other hand, are excellent at exception-handling! They can spot anomalies in your process output before they become a huge problem.
The real problems with IT and business process design is that we have been suckered into thinking that – if only we get the program right – everything will work perfectly. It won’t. Stuff changes, in the business environment, in customer perceptions, and in what our competitors are offering. That is why, for example, the US is struggling so much with supply-chain management. Our systems are designed for everything to go right. We just don’t understand how to design systems.
