Thread by @MrAlanCooper

A fundamental truth about any good white collar worker--manager or practitioner--is that they know how to react to different situations that arise on a daily basis, adapting and adjusting their behavior to suit. 1

That is, business process is a framework for the use of appropriate tools and techniques in situationally-appropriate amounts. It’s all very personal and emergent, within the clearly stated goals of the enterprise. 2

Everyone who works in an office knows this. It’s obvious to anyone with any experience at all. 3

The problem with things that are self-evident and obvious is that no one makes them explicit. No one says that your work is constantly adjusting and adapting, because, well, nobody needs to say the obvious. 4

And then along comes business process software. There’s a ridiculously huge amount of software that lives in the back offices of businesses and automates the process of the business. Work flow. Accounting. Auditing. Procurement. Hiring. Conformance. Stuff like that. 5

Virtually all such software is designed and built based on the insane idea that business processes are like a predictable series of sequential operations. A then B then C then D then check the box and move on to the next docket. 6

Virtually all back office software is built on an idealized concept of how businesses work, and are utterly incapable of dealing with how businesses actually work. 7

“Work flow” is a convenient euphemism for how things do not actually behave in the real world. 8

But back office executives like to hear their processes described in such clear, deterministic terms. The perfectly squared-off corners of this idealized model is compelling. 9

Partly they imagine their offices working that way, and partly they desire that reality emulate the pristine model. They WANT their offices to work that way. So they open up their checkbooks and buy the software. 10

So most big companies manage their people, processes, and infrastructure with tools that can’t adjust and adapt to the ever-changing daily needs of business. That is, of people. The software works well only with other software. 11

In other words, back-office software is an enormous obstacle in the path of good business. The software forces employees to work inefficiently, inappropriately, and ineffectively. It makes them miserable. Miserable employees tend to create miserable customers. 12

I’m not sure this problem is even solvable. To fix it, you’d have to actually understand what really happens inside your organization. Very, very few managers are interested in that. It would not look good on their OKRs, weekly status, annual review, or resumés. 13

In one of my books, at least 20 years ago, I talked about this idea. I called it “fudgability.” Your software needs to be able to be "fudged.” 14

For example, a program needs a form to be filled out. It will not proceed until all the necessary fields are completed. But humans (and human systems) don’t work that way. 15

In the human world, a form can be partly filled out, and business can proceed. The form is set on the corner of someone’s desk for completion at some later time. The system is idiosyncratic and not self-evident, but it’s resilient, adaptable, extensible, and easy. 16

The computer system is brittle, unfriendly, unhelpful, obstructive, and inhumane. The human system is none of those things. 17

The job of the interaction designer is to deconstruct systems like this and create digital solutions that combine the best attributes of both approaches, both human and idealized work flow. 18

A good designer creates a system that is adaptable, adjustable, revealing of state, willing to let the human lead, capable of holding parts of the information flow in a state of suspense. 19

The system must also have the capability to handle massive traffic, serve many users, and report its aggregate state clearly. 20

I don’t see much design like this in the world today. Mostly, I see the same stuff I saw 20, 30 years ago: Business process, work flow, it’s all forcing humans to work in lockstep with software, rather than vice versa. 21

Now, I’ll be the first to agree that such design is hard. And implementing such design entails more work on the part of the developers, testers, and managers. But then, isn’t that their job? 22

It’s not a coincidence that about 95% of the real work of business is done inside Excel. It's a terrible program, but it’s powerful, flexible, and it allows its user to work fudgably, adaptably, in real time, while seeing most of what is happening right there on the screen. 23

The biggest problem with Excel is that it presents itself as a programmer’s tool, with a programmer’s value system. Programmers can make Excel sing, while normal humans can just muddle through. The solution does not lie in programmer mental models. 24