This afternoon's reading started with one of my favorite analysts, Forrester’s Craig Le Clair, who posed the question: "Is All Work Becoming Knowledge Work?" And my afternoon reading concluded with an interesting sort of self-help blog on Forbes.com titled "Three Powerful Ways to Stop Wasting Time" that in turn concluded with the oft-offered sentiment: "It takes far less time to do something right the first time, than to suffer through countless rushed efforts."

Our economy (particularly the part that is growing) is no longer built on the backs of production workers who perform endless repetitive tasks. It is built on knowledge work (yes Craig, all work is becoming knowledge work). And knowledge work is hard, takes real brainpower, mental agility, adaptability, and is definitely worth doing right the first time.

In a recent survey of 151 application development and implementation decision-makers conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of MicroPact, respondents reported that "Business' requirements often change before the system can be fully developed and deployed" was the "top barrier to their organization achieving their application development goals." That means that traditional process-first approaches to architecting software solutions are no longer sufficient. The solutions we are building now should be dynamic and foster the high-value, semi-structured, information-intensive work of today's business professionals.

Is Process Mapping a Barrier To Innovation? It can be. Download the study to learn more.