I read somewhere that the purpose of technology is to “improve the way of life”. I believe this assessment to be true. If you think about any piece of technology—fork, shovel, computer, internet—all of those things are designed to improve life and make it easier. If technology is created with that in mind, why so often do we find that technology companies or IT departments muddy up their processes with unnecessary tasks or too many people involved? Isn’t a large part of technology principles to make life more efficient?
In general, it’s good to have checks and balances in any process. You want to make sure things are done accurately as well as efficiently. Unfortunately, many companies take the checks and balances to the extreme. There is such a thing as “too many cooks in the kitchen”. I’m sure many of you know exactly what I mean.
Consider this – let’s say your department receives a request to change text on the company website from “Click here to learn more about Fresh Squeezed Tech” to “Learn more about Fresh Squeezed Tech”. Instead of just sending you the new verbiage, they send it to everyone in their department as well (claiming they want feedback). Suddenly you’re faced with an influx of emails, all with various ways of directing the user to Fresh Squeezed Tech. Then you find yourself being invited to a meeting where the exact verbiage is discussed ad nauseam. Does it really matter what the sentence says? If the ultimate goal is to efficiently direct the user to Fresh Squeezed Tech, why does it take 15 people to weigh in on what the link should read? Someone needs to take ownership (preferably the original requester) and make the call.
This example is just a teeny tiny drop in the bucket compared to the ocean of inefficiencies that are found throughout technology processes. It just so happens the above case would be a perfect opportunity for collaboration in Google Wave. In fact, I believe a lot of the inefficiencies most companies face (technology companies or not) would be greatly reduced with Google Wave technology (technology being the keyword).
Let’s make our processes more efficient by using technology to create technology. Now there’s a genius idea!
About me, hmmm, where to start. Ok, my interest in technology, internet, and website design all started when AOL first launched as an ISP. This was the beginning of the internet craze.
I hate that! When I worked for the government, even a misspelling had to go back through the approval process. A small change would take up to a week. My personal favorite was to ask for a comment by x date and the day after receive a comment. No matter how great it was, I wouldn’t implement it until the next round of changes.
It would be nice if companies started exploring the open server protocols for Wave now so that they can be leveraged for internal uses as soon as possible.