The last fifty years has seen the advent and rise of the Information Age -- a period marked by the ability to integrate data management and transactional data processing into many aspects of society. During this time, we have developed the means and tools to transform and move data about in quantities undreamt of during the Industrial Age.  As information technology (IT) has evolved and matured over these years by the efforts of untold numbers of programmers, engineers and scientists around the world, its range of effect has increased from controlling data formats and performing simple branching decisions to complex data analysis, process scheduling, provisioning systems management, sophisticated interface management, network control and more.

In this first decade of the twenty-first century, IT sophistication has reached a tipping point.

I came across an interesting story by Dr. Leon Kappelma,  Dr. Kappelman is the chair for SIMEAWG (Society for Information Management's Enterprise Architecture Working Group) and as such is doing some very interesting and good work on the issues facing Enterprise Architecture (EA). His article, "Bridging the Chasm", states the vision of EA as being the bridging of the gap between strategy and implementation.

EA represents a new way of thinking about the enterprise,and a new way of managing the enterprise, and its IT. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke calls it “intangible capital.” Dr. Kappelman.

As Enterprise Architecture is to Dr. Kappelman, so Workforce Automation is to me.

Prior to workforce automation, we have always been up against a natural and lengthy process – that of the requirement to evolve an operative paradigm in order to transfer the knowledge of how the strategists and visionaries saw to do a thing into the heads of the larger workforce that would actually perform the tasks (I’m using “operative paradigm” here to mean a cultural view of how to do a thing (process) as opposed to the broader Khunian paradigm world view).

New methods being taught to the workers must compete with the current operative paradigm – often creating a friction that leads to misinterpretation and turbulence.Communicating the task, instructions, and changes which occur with businesses today, implementing those request and work-flow into software code creates stressful change for business. Cloud Computing's ideal platform will  reduce resistance and increase efficacy.  And because paradigms are contextual (low in specific detail) in nature, there is still a limit to the organizational benefits a newly evolving operative paradigm will bring about.  This is why, even over many generations of learning, operations are still “messy” and not actively formulative.

Workforce Automation is the implementation of process without the requirement of the worker’s knowledge of the process. EA will be the creation of a Workforce Automation methodology

With the QBOS platform, non-engineers and non-programmers can now contribute to the further evolution, maturity and range of information technology.  Anyone with specialized knowledge can now convert their knowledge into a control system without having to hire programmers and engineers (see an example here). This is not to say that programmers and engineers will no longer be needed.  Their roles will both evolve and continue to be in demand.  But just as IT originally could only be pushed forward by a relatively small group of engineers trained in configuring systems via primitive languages such as Assembler, and then later that group grew to include software developers and analysts as easier-to-understand computer languages came into being, so today is just another step in that .

But there are two differences between the previous evolutionary transitions in IT and the current one.  And these differences will push IT beyond a new tipping point.

The first difference is that, for the first time, the conversion of specialized knowledge to IT control systems can be done without any lengthy or specialized training in IT.  This means that the ability to push the power of IT into more corners of human life and business will be expanded from the relatively small set made up of programmers, engineers and scientists to a much larger and growing superset: Peter F. Drucker's famed "knowledge worker".

The second difference is that, because data processing has effectively merged with common communications over the last sixteen years, decision-branching and instructions in data processing systems can now include human beings since the data processing systems have access to the same communication channels that human beings use to communicate with each other.

The QBOS Tradespace development platform embodies these two significant differences and means that for the first time a knowledge worker can directly implement IT solutions that both embody the knowledge worker's expertise and automate the associated human workforce.  "The value in workforce automation cannot be understated as it removes the human element from the single greatest cause of failure and turbulence in any organizational structure: the hand-off.  "James Lord - CTO QBOS

As we extend our business processes into the new millennium, the cloud environment will be just that arena to advance from the Information Age into the Knowledge Age.

IF you would like to see for yourself how the URAD Platform as a Service can build an entire Opportunity Management System in under 20 minutes, your invited!

For more information on Tradespace Development take a click trip here!

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