Joe Katzman <kat@pathcom.com> said (in part):
snip
> Your point about the relational database model and its potential
> transposition to organizations is an interesting one. As for
> Object-Oriented methodologies, it's something I've been thinking about but
> am not yet 100% clear on.
>
> It does strike me as an interesting metaphor, though, which could
> potentially explain many shifts in our workplace. White-collar TQM as the
> logical consequence of having to "snap together" teams like distributed
> objects, managing at the level of results and values (classes?) rather
> than detailed directives and policies that must be rewriiten wholesale
> when change strikes, etc.
For those of you who haven't had a chance yet, take a look at Goldman,
Nagel, and Priess: Agile Competition and Virtual Organizations. You can
also search the Industry Week archives on Compuserve or read the Rick Dove
articles in "Production Magazine" (now called "Automotive Production"). A
common thread across all of the Agility authors is persistence and
reconfigurability. All of the other characteristics of OO fall into place
as well (in part because of the LO bias of Agile systems) as they do on
this list. Go through the threads in the archives and watch the
reconfigurations take place as the product (subject) changes. An
interesting article on "object-oriented organizations" can also be found
in Quality Managment Journal, Volme 3, Issue 4. You can probably get
reprints for http://www.asqc.org or http://www.qualityprogress.org.
For more on Agility see http://www.agilityforum.org/ For Agile learning
see http://absu.amef.lehigh.edu/ALCI/ALCI.html.
--jzavacki@wolff.com John Zavacki The Wolff Group 800-282-1218
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>