RPA and the Future of Work, Dystopian Views

In the last several months, I’ve given ten talks on Robotic Process Automation (RPA), it’s relationship to AI and future affect on jobs. These were mostly at tech conferences where the audience is a mix of corporate and government technology and business leaders. The industries represented are diverse, as is the process focus and expertise. But participants are similar in important ways. They are excited, if not well informed, about the potential of AI and robotics. The average IQ in the room seems well above the US average of 98 which is is a solid ninth in world rankings. And lastly, they all will benefit either professionally or financially from the progression of robotics.

No shame in making money. I wish I’d made more. But there is more then a hint of nervous discomfort just below the surface that stems from the removal of humans from the workforce. There are many cute references to taking the robot out of the human. This is supposed to mean that we are using humans essentially as robots, and the less we do that, the better off they will be. But the fact is, many workers today are good at the routine, feel productive, and may lack the mental quickness for other tasks. Several firms had given human names to their new digital workers as if calling them Yoda or Jennifer will make them more accepted by the people they are replacing.

RPA Targets The Cubicle Working Class

Read more

5 Steps to Connect EA to Strategy (a Very Short Summary!)

Many enterprise architecture (EA) teams struggle with creating a program that demonstrates the level of strategic value that they believe EA should have. Even after following all the advice in frameworks and online articles, chief architects and CIOs still struggle as EA programs fail to reach their potential as an influencer of strategy execution across Read more

5 Steps to Connect EA to Strategy (a Very Short Summary!)

Many enterprise architecture (EA) teams struggle with creating a program that demonstrates the level of strategic value that they believe EA should have. Even after following all the advice in frameworks and online articles, chief architects and CIOs still struggle as EA programs fail to reach their potential as an influencer of strategy execution across Read more

New book: ‘Changes – a business novel’

Delighted to say I’ve just published my ‘business-novel’ Changes. Hooray! More details are at https://leanpub.com/tb-changes . Here’s the cover: And here’s the blurb: Marco has a new job: Head of Organizational Change. But his bright new plan to bring the company into the

Form Follows Function on SPaMCast 442

A new month brings a new appearance on Tom Cagley’s Software Process and Measurement (SPaMCast) podcast. This week’s episode, number 442, features Tom’s excellent essay on capability teams (highly recommended!), followed by a Form Follows Function installment based on my post “Systems of Social Systems and the Software Systems They Create”. Kim Pries bats cleanup […]

Why You Are Getting Disrupted

The overriding theme of every disruption story I’ve ever heard is that firms thought they had more time than they did. So, I’ve been pondering the why. We can see disruption happening all around us, but why is it so difficult to get out in front of it?…

The Value of Architecture, Reference Architecture and Architecture Framework (i)

continuing
The Value of Architecture, Reference Architecture and Architecture Framework
 
Any system has an architecture. An enterprise does as well. For instance there are Bus and Star styles of architectures. One of these architecture patterns m…

The Value of Architecture, Reference Architecture and Architecture Framework

There are many common sense reasons, such as predictability, repeatability, consistency, standardization etc., for the use of models, templates, standards, paterns, frameworks, reference or/and generic architectures. A class in OO (Objec…