Software will Eat the World...no it won't - and ChatGPT is a tanker truck of gas backing up to a fire...but not the way you think

'Software is going to eat the world'

In the most constructively negative way, I must say 'No it isn't'.

... why should businesses care ?

ChatGPT4 and its evolution will help drive better service, superior agility and lower cost structure for some firms. But not in the way you think. That combo will help thwart competitors. ChatGPT is not the reason it is more like a tanker truck of gas on the fire.

Let me explain.

The Low Code No Code Tsunami

ChatGPT4 and its evolutionary cousins are going to put the Low Code No Code Wave and intelligent process platforms into hyperdrive. Most code will be machine-assisted/created. The very deep end of the software pool like that behind hyperspeed/hyperscale data firm Ocient or humans plus AI CrowdSmart.ai , making sure autonomous vehicles/robot don't crash or landing rocket boosters will still require genius coders. But that is a tiny minority of business tech. Over time a lot of software construction will just be reusable components plus automation services. Utility stuff in the form of smart service platforms like those that manage reusable components, data integration/normalization, and leverage and process pattern intelligence will be more important.

Top-performing IT will become anchored in super agile, super useful business improvement architects and construction managers. They will turn enterprises into intelligent fabrics, not buckets of legacy spaghetti. This will happen at some companies and at smart new ones, including Wave 2 Innovators. The others will slowly decline. Already struggling ones will go full Thelma Louise.

The cost structure and agility of companies that adopt this will be competitively superior. IT focus will be on making things, processes, people, and flows intelligent and, from that, proactive, preventative, pattern-matched, pragmatic, predictive, personalized, permissioned, preventative, process performant, and precise. (the Toby 10Ps). Fully explaining the 10Ps is about an array of modern tech change I often cover in a two-hour B-School/board interactive talk, but for now it's enough to just imagine two firms, one with the 10Ps and one without. As a customer, investor, leader, or employee which do you pick? If that is not clear, make the firm a healthcare center you are visiting - now, which one do you pick?

In the early days, FedEx was a tech company with process genius, and quaternary process controls that drove service excellence at an almost unimaginable level back then. That efficiency, clarity on process, reduction in errors, and rework also create an excellent cost structure. Oddly, the best service and quality were the best cost structure.

This 'No Code Low Code' tech wave has had an uphill battle for 20+ years (yes, mixed metaphor). Most boards have never heard of it. It was always easy for the IT 'mystics' to deprecate, deflate and distract the non-IT savvy business guys from this trend. If you were an artisanal stonemason, you would think up real, logical reasons why shitfing to 3D printing houses was a terrible idea.

A decade ago I took iRise to a giant FS company in New England whose 12 layers of IT management lined up in vibrant opposition to a machine that helps with design, architecture, and code. Their resistance was emotional. Their leadership was afraid of the people change/cultural issues...they literally told me that.

Rarely does anyone in business or IT get in trouble for not doing something different that would have had a big impact. No group in the accounting department keeps track of the P&L impacts that might have happened. This is another reason why leadership matters. From the board on down, managing by action versus plan dilutes risk appetite. It creates a political gravitational pull away from changing things that are seemingly working to something that might be much better. It also makes people internally focused and incrementally cautious.

Web Services (reusable software components) caught on in a huge way at Motorola 20 years ago in part because I had an Ed Zander, a tech-savvy innovation believer, as CEO. Also, many in the C suite were manufacturing guys who laughed at IT just now discovering reusable components. Minor detail we showed that we had coded routines to 'check credit card' 42 times in 42 different ways and could replace it all with one robust web service.

Process tools (BPM/RPA) that then help generate IT solutions (and code) also ran into roadblocks, especially because business people could make changes without calling IT or reading a spec doc or getting pulled into some agile scrum thing. IT losing value/control for the greater good is a hard sell. The head of the merchant side at a large credit card firm where I ran tech said this in front of the operating committee after our first BPM effort:

"3x faster and cheaper, and finally, you IT monkeys gave us exactly what we wanted in release one instead of the typical three releases of rework."

I think he meant monkeys in a good way.

At Aviva, a $90B rev, $800B AUM, 314-year-old FS company chaired by a Lord in the UK, they had a Mt. Everest of long-aged, spaghetti processes. I ran tech but also some of the risk committees including 3rd Party Risk. My Risk self had to report my CIO self to the board because I had rolled out so much BPM that half the company was running on software from Lombardi, a tiny Austin-based startup. If Lombardi faltered, we would be at great risk. I orchestrated a sale between MS and IBM. IBM won it and bought it. It degraded over time. Great BPM really doesn't need an army of Global Service high-end consultants. Lombardi was the best in the space by far back then. Today IBM is the bottom left dot in the relevant Gartner Quadrant. UIPath is the top right dot. Just 5 years ago, they were raising a B round. Last year their market cap was about $50B.

So why will this work now? Why does ChatGPT'n' matter? Why are Intelligent Business Automation Platforms and No Code Low Code about to accelerate massively?

Three reasons:

1. As the economy turns positive in 2024 the three-pronged sell of better cost structure, faster tech solutioning and high-quality output will resonate. Selling agility as tech, in general, accelerates.
2. ChatGPT and its offspring will put this BPM/RPA on steroids making it better and easier with a bigger impact and a model that pays bigger dividends the more you use it. The intelligent BPM/RPA services will be a lot faster, better, and more accretive.
3. Next Gen - Q1 2024 - A few platforms will embrace ChatGPT type tech to extend RPA into new areas like planning, strategy, industrial engineering, marketing, sales, HR/employee engagement etc. RPA plus ChatGPT plus massive data ingestion (old AI) plus Edge/Federated AI will give early adopters/new entrants game-changing advantages.

So Software Doesn't Eat the World

Software will be important but coding not so much. An awful lot of software will feel like electricity. It will be behind the walls, in cables, and in ever more useful batteries/storage devices.

When an electric device does the thing we love like entertain me, heat up my leftovers, transport me, or run my enterprise, I spend little time thinking about the electricity behind the activity I am doing. No one on a MagLev train says 'wow how cool is this electricity'.

Software won't eat the world. It will be foundationally important but it will be behind the scenes, a lot like electricity.

ChatGPT4 accelerating this No Code Low Code and process intelligence tsunami will help move code behind the scenes. We will care about system consequence, impact, surprising intelligence, and engagement. Apps will be the first to be automated, but the software factory for the enterprise will not be a thing over time except for the companies that do the deep end of the pool stuff.

I expect this to be a big deal in the distant future...like 2024. ChatGPT for these platforms is a veritable tanker truck of kerosene backing up to the fire.

Directives and Managing the Change are Two Different Things

This will require leading, staffing, and shaping IT differently. It can be evolutionary, not radical change. The same IT structures you have today will create natural headwinds against this change. Many companies will take a wait-and-see view on this. Many will assign this to the existing team and structure. That will be like telling your cricket team to grab the new gear and get out there on the rugby pitch. (Hint: that ends badly)

The last word of caution is that while this stuff is conceptually simple, like rugby, it requires hands-on practice to be good. The sooner your team is on the field actually experiencing it and learning, getting the bumps and bruises, the better.

That goes back to leadership and boards. How are teams rewarded for those first sloppy, bumpy, ugly learn rugby games? Or are there entrenched disincentives to even think about getting out on the field?

The Photo: I barely knew my damaged survivor of mustard gas maternal grandfather (WWI) Claude Wallis. One of my favorite stories was from way before I was born, he told my Dad (in the backyard) not to play with machinery he didn't understand... it was a wheelbarrow.