When you digitize or automate, you expose the gaps: the unspoken workarounds, the inconsistent decisions, the tacit "know-how" that lives in people’s heads.
In my 2009 PhD, I explored how configuration systems help engineering companies cope with product & process complexity. But the lesson applies just as well to any domain or process you try to digitize: if your knowledge isn’t consistent and explicit, your digitalization won’t scale.
In my 2009 PhD, I explored how configuration systems help engineering companies cope with product & process complexity. But the lesson applies just as well to any domain or process you try to digitize: if your knowledge isn’t consistent and explicit, your digitalization won’t scale.
The image below shows the shift needed — for both product and process knowledge — from tacit and idiosyncratic toward something automation can build on: explicit, consistent, and agreed.
Each quadrant in the matrix hints at the work required: documenting, aligning, defining, sometimes even changing the organization.
📌 You don’t just digitize a process. You stabilize it.
Digitalization only scales what’s clear. Not what’s clever.
As a short side note: Remember to document domain and process knowledge before, during, and after your project to keep it explicit and consistent. Skipping documentation leads to unspoken workarounds — and eventually, to brittle systems built on tacit, inconsistent knowledge.
