YOLOable systems are built out of flexible pieces. That's why Excel "abuse" is a constant theme in enterprise :).
We should not be thinking about architecture at the business process level. This is just repeating the mistake that needs to be avoided here. This is, and will ever be, a pile of ad-hoc hacks. They're not meant to add up to a well-designed system in a bottom-up fashion, because there is no system to design. The structure we naturally seek, is constantly in flux.
The right architectural/design decisions to make here is to make it possible to assemble quick hacks out of robust parts that fulfill additional needs the people on the ground may not consider - logs/audit trail/telemetry, consistency for ergonomic reasons, error handling, efficient compute usage, tracking provenance, information access restrictions dictated by legal obligations, etc.
The most important change needed is in the mindset. Internal dev needs to stop thinking of itself as the most important part of the company, or as a well-defined team that should own products. To be useful, the opposite is needed - such devs need to basically become ChatGPT that works: always be there to rapidly respond to requests to tweak some software by people on the ground, and then to retweak is as needed. They need to do this work rapidly, without judgement, and never assume they know better.
Only then people will stop weaving ad-hoc Excel sheets into business-critical processes.
We should not be thinking about architecture at the business process level. This is just repeating the mistake that needs to be avoided here. This is, and will ever be, a pile of ad-hoc hacks. They're not meant to add up to a well-designed system in a bottom-up fashion, because there is no system to design. The structure we naturally seek, is constantly in flux.
The right architectural/design decisions to make here is to make it possible to assemble quick hacks out of robust parts that fulfill additional needs the people on the ground may not consider - logs/audit trail/telemetry, consistency for ergonomic reasons, error handling, efficient compute usage, tracking provenance, information access restrictions dictated by legal obligations, etc.
The most important change needed is in the mindset. Internal dev needs to stop thinking of itself as the most important part of the company, or as a well-defined team that should own products. To be useful, the opposite is needed - such devs need to basically become ChatGPT that works: always be there to rapidly respond to requests to tweak some software by people on the ground, and then to retweak is as needed. They need to do this work rapidly, without judgement, and never assume they know better.
Only then people will stop weaving ad-hoc Excel sheets into business-critical processes.