Tool Becomes the Tasker

A second reversal came to my attention today.

I realized months ago, that in the T&E (Test and Evaluation) world, M&S (Modeling and Simulation) has ceased to become the money and time saver it used to be. That’s because such high fidelity modeling requires V&V (Verification and Validation), which itself needs lots of real-life test data. So, the “M&S Dragon” becomes a driver for more data, not a tool to help us take less.

Corporate travel used to be a manual process. Then it became automated with computer tools and web interfaces. What’s happened now is the auto-routing, approval process is driven by the computer. If I (the human) don’t respond when and how the computer demands, trips get cancelled, reimbursements don’t happen, or other nasty things.

What used to be a tool to help me do my job faster, is becoming an impediment to doing the job.