In the comments following this great piece by Hutch Carpenter about 2010 trends, someone relevantly drawn our attention on the importance of integration. I agree and would like to sum up some ideas about all the integration challenges which are much wider than we can usually think.
Notice : when talking about integration we usually think about software integration. That’s of course a key dimension. But I also pay much attention to the human side integration, what I call behaviors and practices integrations. Any reason to that ? Asking people to collaborate and change behaviors and practices according to whether they are in real life or online, according to the tool they use, may make them become schizophrenic and, even worse, push them to reject what they’re proposed or use it poorly. In my opinion this dimension gains more and more importance as the space for communication and exchange tools become as important as the one for process tools.
I can see three challenges for integration (the two dimensions of integration being highly intermingled).
is becoming as banal as electricity or running water. Plug, use, unplung. Nothing more. It’s a service like any other and the software + hardware duo is not a sacred cow anymore in people’s life. So why should it be so at the office. Today it’s nothing more than a simple computer and nothing more than software, it’s a part of my everyday life and the only thing that matters is that it does what I expect it to do. I don’t care how it’s done or whether my favorite software is on the net net or on my hard drive. Employee’s computers have shifted from a strategic good to a common consumer good.
You can find the "original" french version of this blog here
