Comment by nraynaud
2 years ago
Funny, I recently had a client telling me his system was non-refundable, so I didn't handle cancellations in the database, later I discovered that actually the sales channel tends to manually refund orders if the request is less than 1h old.
Humans are not ready for perfect information representation.
This sinks so many "business transformation" projects, especially in the public sector. An organization contains explicit knowledge, which is written down in its processes, and tacit knowledge, which isn't, and may not be known to managers! But when converting a business to software the tacit knowledge, critical to the functioning of the business, gets lost.
It’s also because developing cancellations cost money, and they don’t like spending, so they “forget” some details.
I would argue that languages are not ready for perfect information representation. Programs explode when presented with minor inconsistencies. And changing the representation in minor way requires rewriting the program.
With CUE, we are trying to solve this exact problem.