Are we all familiar with this metaphor? Abraham Maslow ("Hierarchy of Human Needs") is said to have originated this, but it hardly matters. The concept rings so true that it has probably been known since the first tool.
I have lately participated in some discussions on LinkedIn with the result that I now believe that the vast majority of workers in information technology are in possession of a tool that they are seeking to apply to every problem that they encounter. The really dangerous ones are creating problems to use their tool on. Oh, wait, there's a name for that--it's called marketing.
Notice, too that I said "in possession of" a tool. It is apparently no longer necessary (if it ever was necessary) to actually be skilled in the application of your favorite tool.
I once worked with a guy--a programmer in this case, but I'm not looking to single out programmers--who said something rather like, "We don't support the business. We are the business." The business was rail transportation and it is true that if all of the applications used by this particular company were to suddenly disappear, those "left behind" would no doubt have had to cease operations until they could be reorganized.
That's not the bad part though. the bad part is that this is a really good example of just how far the notion of "where's the next nail?" can take us. When I believe that the world as I know it is held together by this tool that I hold in my hand, I am in the midst of a dissociative process. I don't go home and act this out. When I'm not at work for example, I'm just the guy next door. When I do get to work, though, I'm still the guy next door--it's just a different door. We--most, if not all--live in two separate realities. About the only thing that keeps us from being diagnosed with a dissociative identity disorder (DID) is that we (usually) remember what happened in the other world.
I could go on at length but the bottom line is that, not only is our work life a separate reality from our real life, but there is a completely different reality in the executive suite than there is on the floor, and (for me) most importantly, a separate one for I.T. Leave aside for a moment, the variety of realities we might encounter as we go from networks to servers to DBA, to data architecture, to development to QA--it is absolutely amazing that we get anything at all accomplished.
The poor data architect finds himself stepping into and out of a dozen distinct realities every day. It is certainly a defense mechanism to take refuge in a favorite tool--the "data model." This is the talisman used to shield against the swarm of alternative realities. Unfortunately, the tool was designed for a different purpose, to capture and integrate all the different realities. Nails come in many forms, too.
The aim of BI was to gain an insight into what is happening in the business and then maybe perhaps improve the things that are causing the most "harm". In order to do that we need to be able to identify what the business is doing, how it is being done, what would indicate a measure of the performance, what would indicate that there was a change given a different approach to doing things. None of these things can be done by a machine and/or a tool to build data models and generate "create table ... create index ..." scripts. Someone has to be able to think through these matters and compose a coherent model of the business. Unitl the DW/BI practitioners can make the "money bags" the reality of it all, we are doomed to the "looking for the next nail" or solutions looking for a problem.
ReplyDeleteAt some level you are certainly right. Think of an army--the privates are the hammers. If you are a platoon leader or even a company commander, you may always have to take the approach of "where's the next nail" but if you are the commanding general or field marshal, you can't afford to have that particular perspective. Assume whatever role you are comfortable in but only remember--you may not be seeing the whole picture.
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