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Comments

Jazzmann91

Well said. Thanks for writing!

I like that you provide clear direction on how to improve, rather than just pointing out the obvious problems. Many seem fixated with the issues and they refuse to back off and see the patterns they've already accepted contain the root of their problems.

Bruce Stewart

A thoughtful and much welcomed piece.

I presume, from your definitions above, that you see data as pre-object (i.e. a fact is data in a context)? This means then that only the objective gets through the sieve as information, since subjective states — useful to human life but not in a business process context — may be "facts" but are not "object facts" therefore not information?

sig

Bruce,

yep you're right. Allow me to expand a bit:

When modelling reality, having IT this time, we are able to split the facts and the context, and indeed separate it from the non-information fluff like layout, accounting rules and whatnot that we inherited from the days when Representation and Presentation where best kept in the same "container".

So the starting point must be the object facts, and put another way, they do not convey any context (or subjective state as you said) beyond that it's facts-of-the-object. Just like reality when you look at a pen on your table: That real life objects only holds "facts" and says nothing about who owns it, where has it been, when was it made etc.

Second step: With IT models of that singular object, the pen, as well as other singular objects like "Bruce" and "table" we can now add meta-data (or subjective states) like "Bruce owns pen" and "Pen is located on table". And so forth.

With that we have the minimum complexity of reality itself, as well as the raw material for any further needs: "Sale of pens" do not require a separate transaction-object (invoice say) any more, just do a query when you need the P&L report for December: "Sum up value of all pens that changes ownership from us to any customer in December". Or inventory: "List all pens located on table today".

Ditto in fact for mapping patterns and re-arranging relations - making up for a better basis for "wisdom" and "innovation" :)

And hence a model that can be created using IT while giving all that we need for human processes. Essential if we want to create process frameworks for human processes (or Barely Repeatable Processes) instead of only those for Easily Repeatable Processes (ERP).

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