Terminal Disease
Symptom: Extensive information exchange, data redundancy, and rekeying.

Disease: Arbitrary fragmentation of a natural process.

When employees are keying data taken from one computer into another, it is a symptom of what we call "terminal disease."

The usual response:

The efficiency-minded manager's typical response to a case of terminal disease is to look for a way to rekey the material more quickly or, if the manager is more technologically oriented, to find a way to link the terminals, so the material can travel electronically from one system to another.

Both solutions treat the symptom, not the disease.
 
From REENGINEERING THE CORPORATION,
by Michael Hammer & James Champy,  1993

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last modified February 28, 1998 ~~ comments and suggestions to rbanis@jinx.umsl.edu