James Martin on 'The Great Transition.' - book - Industry Trend or Event - Interview

Software Magazine, Dec, 1995

For many students of information science, James Martin wrote the book. Perhaps, like no others, his books and companies have promoted the value of applied information science. As business best-seller charts are now so replete with "how-to" guides for reengineering the organization, we thought it was past time to ask Martin for his read on recent events. We spoke just as his latest book, The Great Transition, was released.

Q For years, analysts have asked people how their paper systems worked in order to automate business processes. What, if anything, is new?

A I think as we went through the 1980s we were doing just what you said. We were analyzing how systems worked in enterprises and then saying let's automate what's already there. By the time we got to the end of the 1980s we began to realize that wasn't the right thing to do. It began to dawn on people that the way to use computers and networks was not to automate what existed but to fundamentally redesign.

Q But a lot of business redesign has been done with a hammer -- not especially fine-tuned workmanship.

A Yes, the viewpoint of The Great Transition is that there's not one way to change a corporation, there are many ways. Most of the change methods that IT professionals understand are just one point on a spectrum and very often they're the wrong methods. Nearly all of the books talk about one point on the spectrum. What [Mike] Hammer says is right is completely and utterly different from what [W. Edwards] Deming says is right. So, there's a whole range -- the Japanese style of kaizen has worked wonderfully in Japan. TQM [Total Quality Management] has worked in some organizations and not others in the States. IT people are looking at existing processes and doing redesign when very often those processes shouldn't exist at all. They're putting personal computers and LANs into departments when very often those departments shouldn't exist at all.

One really ought to take a higher-level view. A focus on value streams [becomes] important. The Great Transition attempts to put the alternate change methods into perspective.

Q Object technology in some ways is the successor to the Case industry. You are closely associated with both. How is object adaptation proceeding?

A A few corporations are doing a great job with object technology but it really is a few, so far. There are lots of corporations that say they're using object technology when they're using it for pretty small stuff -- certainly not for things that add to the bottom line of the corporation, certainly not for the rebuilding of the value streams. The more we understand about object technology, the more it appears inevitable that it's the right thing to do, or at least the right next thing to do in the industry. Probably the next great fortune to be made in software is with firms that provide application-oriented libraries so that you can build applications very fast and flexibly. I think this is the next great challenge. Now, in order to build those libraries you really want to start with tools for building applications out of preexisting components. You'd like to start with a good repository, and a methodology that is strongly targeted to reuse.

Q Your book describes the future corporation as a "cyborcorp" and talks of virtual operations. What's It's role?

A It's by now become very clear that the corporation of 10 years from now will have absolutely no resemblance to the corporation 10 years in the past. We're transforming the organization. We can't really talk about it unless we invent a word for it. The word I like to use is "cyborcorp."

The cyborcorp depends to a very large extent on IT, very complex software, open connectivity, data warehousing, the capability to change applications extremely fast -- this really changes the whole structure of the corporation. It would be very difficult to create one without a chief cyborcorp architect. It's a daunting job. You've got to understand how to engineer a corporation so it has open connectivity, you've got to understand virtual operations. The thing that's really important within corporations from an operational point of view is the value streams. Some are bread-and-butter and you don't worry too much about them. Others are absolutely critical to making the corporation beat its competition. And as one identifies those value streams you then have to realize, if you're going to do them absolutely world-class, you're going to need core competencies. [Sometimes] you'd like to form a linkage to another corporation that has a core competency that you don't have, and you'd like the linkage to be very tight, realtime with very high bandwidth. That is what we'd call a virtual operation or a virtual value steam. It's a very important concept that we should be teaching to IT professionals everywhere.

Q Would you cite a company doing a good job employing technology today?

A The Hong Kong Bank is one of the most profitable banks in the world. It took over the Midland Bank, which had a reputation for not using technology well, and really demonstrated that a bank that's got the technology right can take over a bank that's got the technology wrong and make it much more profitable. The Hong Kong Bank has just appointed a new CEO and he's an IT person. How many banks would have an ex-it professional appointed bank president? In most industries you can point to a corporation that's got it right. But they are the minority.