Thursday, August 18, 2011

Comparison Analysis of Automation Paradigms


In the previous post, “Paradigms in Management Automation”, I defined four distinct automation paradigms in the past, current, and possible future. Here, I wanted to explain them further by comparing them to each other with a few criteria:

  • Industry trends - hardware and software technologies that were available at time of the paradigm shift
  • Business demands - emerging business demands that triggered the paradigm shift
  • Automation focus - a primary idea or key guiding principle behind the automation practices
  • Dominating architecture - the most common architectural style or framework used to develop the automation practices
  • Integration model - a way multiple systems were integrated with each other
  • Standards - widely used standards that the automation practices comply to, and
Concepts and theories - theoretical principles used to build the automation practices
1. Center-oriented Paradigm
 


Industry trendsMainframes, machine codes, assemblers, procedural programming
Business demandsStore and process large amounts of data in shorter time, share key information among people of organization
Automation focusCritical narrow organization-wide problems
Dominated achitectureMonolithic Architecture
Integration modelNone
StandardsNone
Concepts and theoriesInformation theory, theory of control, cybernetics



2. Function-Oriented Paradigm


Industry trendsPersonal Computers, LANs, WANs, RDBMS, object-oriented programming, component-oriented programming
Business demandsLower cost of automation, addressing unique needs of particular users
Automation focusIndividual functions of users and groups
Dominated achitectureDatabase-Centric (Two- or Multi-tier) Architecture
Integration modelTransfering data between databases, RPCs
StandardsEthernet, TCP/IP, SQL
Concepts and theoriesFunctional decomposition, UML



3. Process-Oriented Paradigm
 


Industry trendsWide spread of automation, Globalization, Internet, service-oriented programming, Wireless networks
Business demandsMore sustainable integration, higher reuse
Automation focusBusiness processes within organization
Dominated achitectureService-Oriented Architecture (SOA)
Integration modelOrchestration of business processes by middleware
StandardsHTTP, Web Services, BPML
Concepts and theoriesBusiness process modeling, Organization theory



4. Goal-Oriented Paradigm


Industry trendsWide use of sensor technologies, Mobile devices, Virtual Reality, Artificial Intelligence and Robots
Business demandsLower integration cost, higher efficiency and transparency, better flexibility, more comprehensive automation
Automation focusOrganization-wide goals broken down into subgoals of individual groups and users
Dominated achitectureMulti-agent Architecture (?), Model-Oriented Architecture (?)
Integration modelNatural gapless integration based on common principles and standards
Standards??
Concepts and theoriesTheory of Management Automation (?)


As you can see from this analysis, management automation has actually come full circle. It started with the organization in a small-scale, jumped to the individual user/group level, rose to the cross-user/cross-group level, and finally returned to the organization level in a comprehensive wide-scale way.

Hopefully, this comparison helped to better explain the four paradigm shifts.

In my next post, I will be further explaining the OODA Loop concept that C2/GOMA rests on. Stay tuned!

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