Automate All the Things!
Automate All the Things!
Or not. I prefer not.
As John Seddon states in his most recent book, it’s far more useful to fully understand customers’ needs, through e.g. simple physical means, like pin-boards, T-cards and spreadsheets, before considering any automation.
And even then, automation has at least two fundamental flaws:
Inability to Cater to Variation in Demand
Automation and automated systems, presently and for the foreseeable future, cannot encompass variety in demand. As we’ve come to relate to the Little Britain meme “ Computer says no”. Customer demand inherently has variation. Thus, automation leads to a poorer customer experience, as many customer needs are handled poorly, or not at all. I cite the British Gas website and customer experience as a particularly egregious example.
Employment
Let’s also look at the bigger picture of social cohesion, of which people having jobs is a part. Jobs give people meaning, status, and something to do. As well as greasing the wheels of commerce – employed people have disposable income which contributes to companies’ revenues.
The idea of Basic Income is all very fine (I’m a fan) but that concept has some major wrinkles to iron out before it becomes a shoe-in.
In the meantime, how about we try to create businesses – and other organisations – that provide meaningful employment to more people, rather than fewer? Will that negatively impact profit margins? I doubt. And there’s always Deming’s First Theorem in any case.
More and more often, the Software Industry is being called upon to live up to its fine moral pronouncements. Automation is an item in the negative column on that balance sheet.
– Bob
Think Different
Hi Bob, I take it that you’re against total automation, that you’re fine with partial automation? I’d also appreciate a definition of automation as you see it. For example, I see great benefit in automating routine&boring tasks.
Also, it’s not that I’M against automation. Logic (and ethics) is against it.
Automation to the minimum. Automation: Anything involving software. (See also: #NoSoftware). Who decides whether a task is “routine and boring”?
I wrote about encountering apps in the real world where the code had obviously been tested using automation, but no human had ever interacted with the system before it was released, in my own blog:
The example I give in that post was possibly the most egregious. The code all worked perfectly, but the UI was totally counter-intuitive and had obviously never been exposed to real users.
The problem with automation is ultimately what happens when senior managers find out about it, and believe that they can reduce their expenditure on test resources. Given that so much software provided by third parties is commissioned by people who will never actually use it, the outcome is sadly inevitable. If the software is demo’d to the client before they deploy it, the demo is done by those who built it and know the happy path workflow. They demo the software successfully, the client’s board nod wisely and sign the cheque, and no-one actually tries the thing out on real customers.