Posted by RAH on July 22, 1999 at 17:53:43:

In Reply to: Re: Knowledge management &lotus notes posted by frankwick on July 14, 1999 at 17:06:10:

>we have non technical people building their own apps in no time.

Very, very, very dangerous. Two reasons:

first, software is deceptively simple. People can wack together an app in a couple hours and put it on a Domino server and away it goes. The consequence is 500 applications in a 50 person company with everyone using their own and no one using eachothers. No overarching strategy, information architecture ( remember those ) and lots of wasted time and money.

I have seen companies where Notes databases outnumber staff by tens to one.

second, business people understand their business world, but not how software interacts. Example: guy in a bank who built his own risks tracking database. Didn't like the main corporate one, so made his own. Consequence: risks were missed as they were in one database, not another, data fields were named different etc...

Domino, Exchange, VB etc are just tools. And you can use a hammer to put a screw in! The underlying issues that need to be addressed before even thinking about giving tools to business people are:

1 - what is the business strategy;
2 - what IT policy is required to support the strategy;
3 - what is the information architecture required to support the business strategy;
4 - what development process(es) are going to be used to create, maintain and retire applications;
4 - what are the most appropriate tools to deliver that.

Regards,

Ross ;-))

• G A R O L : compete in the new economy

---

Follow Ups:

---

Click Here to Post Follow Up in New Forums

    Knowledge Management Think Tank (New)

  

 Subject: 

Message: