Document Management Software

The software is initially developed under the slogan "We will simplify the workflow". But all who are connected with this very document circulation as they were busy 8 hours a day, and remain in business. Programs do not free working hours. At least, the majority of existing software products for workflow have made the work only more complicated and complicated. The only thing successful with programmers in this direction is the complete dependence of the enterprise on the functioning of their programs.

For example, not so long ago I was a witness of an accounting statement that they can not calculate and release a person on leave. The conditions were somewhat specific, but in the end everything was within the current labor code. And the only clear reason for the refusal to the employee was the inability of the vacation program to digest the proposed situation. A person was offered several typical options, but such that they were invested in the available functions of the accounting software. At the same time, the main reason was as much as possible hidden and surfaced, only after the employee went to the principle and began to insist on his own. In the end what happens? The program should improve production processes, and in fact imposes additional restrictions on them.

Or an example from your own life. I have a kind of hobby - programming in a VBA environment. For several years of work in the office, more than a dozen quite complex "masterpieces" and a bunch of smaller ones were created, of which only one got accustomed, and one required some refinement. And from the point of view of programming, these were really quite complex macros that operate and process large amounts of information. And they all worked well. Some time. But only art in its pure form turned out to be not so practically applicable. From the last successful implementation, I remember the program for text rewriting made under vba for Word and the program for collecting monthly reports in Excel.

From my observations and unsuccessful experiments I can offer several criteria that are mandatory for obtaining a program that actually can take root and be useful in the office:

• - If the end result of the program is a document, then it should be issued in a format that is convenient for manual editing. Not just printing, but in a file convenient for changes. If then these changes should remain in the history, then we save the modified file.

• - the program on the one hand should be able to enter information by any user, on the other hand, a module of monitoring and prompt correction of errors committed by a limited number of specialists

• - when entering data from the performer, only lists are required. There should not be any associations. All subtraction additions must be done by the program. Give people the opportunity to count the number of lines and from 10 people 1 will count incorrectly, and 1 in their own way.

• - when entering data, the software should provide an opportunity to leave almost all fields empty with the possibility to fill them later. Think a hundred times before requiring a mandatory field.

• - complex automation is possible only for the most primitive actions. And since strict regulations practically never exist, only the most routine operations need to be automated. The program should be a tool, not a substitute for the performer.

You can not believe, you can check, but ignoring the above will lead to the result that automation will be a bureaucratic hemorrhoids. And after all, I want so much automated happiness everywhere.