All Hands on Tech

Introduction

When we began discussing the idea for this book, the COVID pandemic was just receding, leaving behind it a tumultuous set of realities about how work was to be conducted going forward. Bosses and their employees were trying to determine where work should occur (return to offices or continue to work virtually) and who would be doing the work (talent shortages were only just starting to become the new reality of enterprise growth and resource management).

We knew that automation and intelligent machines were already a significant force in enterprise operations. Tom had recently published his 22nd, 23rd, and 24th books—all about artificial intelligence (AI) and the role that it was playing in transforming business operations, analytics, and skills needed for the future. Ian had just co-authored his first book on intelligent automation. He had recently sold his robotic process automation (RPA) consulting firm, which had helped large enterprises grasp, adopt, and manage process automation in their front- and back-office operations. There was no doubt in our minds that AI-powered automation was a hot topic. But, the question remained, who was going to be doing the automating? Similarly, there was also no doubt that data was taking a center-stage role in almost every transformation discussion. But who was going to be doing the collecting, cleaning, and analyzing of it?

The labor shortage left companies with big plans and small teams to achieve those plans. The one bright ...