a wobbly tower of empty beer crates

I do like this discussion over at Gapingvoid:

Jon Husband says:

"Enterprise software is "electronic concrete" poured over business processes that increasingly will have to flex and change more and more"

MarkN goes:

"monolithic chunks of domain expertise are codified into large, complex, monolithic chunks software and then widely distributed, it is often too late to undo the damage. The switching costs are simply too high." 

Costly from a IT department point of view perhaps, but what about the big picture costs? Better late than never, eh?

Then Tom Guariello makes this point:

"Revisiting the underlying models, however, is so conceptually and emotionally taxing that almost no one ever really does it."

In other words, it's upon time!

Allow me an image from an earlier post - "The Shoemaker Factor":

"Any business or organisation have two basic tasks: interact with the customer, and make the product.
Take your great-great-grandfather's shoemaker. He could discuss shoe needs and leather types with about ten clients a week, and with help of a couple of chaps actually deliver ten pairs a week. Nice balance between his two tasks. Excellent.

Then he was 'industrialised' as in installing a few machines that enabled him to produce a couple of hundred pairs a week. But his client-interaction was not up to that task.
He had to rely on a newfangled and growing business of distribution, advertising, selling (push now) and so forth. Business growing, so did his organisation, hierarchical of course.
He was given the 'production technology' but nobody gave him the 'interaction technology'.

So makeshift solutions were invented, revived and refined to get back a certain air of balance. Marketing, distribution, retail, inventories, selling, push, push - and yes, management and hierarchies.
All makeshift solutions. Empty beer crates on top of each other.

And, tata, we now have the much needed 'interaction technology' aka IT!
But the makeshift solutions will not budge. Hmm."

There you are, in my mind: We elevated temporary solutions into truths and we use IT as duct tape to prop up the rickety tower of empty beer crates.

And nobody should be happy with a life atop a tower of empty plastic containers, or what?