Can applications be too Automated?

As a custom application developer working mostly with small businesses, users often look at “Why can’t the program do this?”, or “How about having the program add this, subtract this - when it’s this, then add a percentage…” yada, yada, yada.  Perhaps you recognize the pattern.  There can be arguments for doing much in the way of accommodating the requests, but in my opinion there can become a time when an application is too automated.

This tended to happen I believe in the early years of programming applications.  The programmer provided 100% of the step-by-step sequence presented to the user - users couldn’t skip anything - they were tightly controlled.  Today the user can go anywhere, and the program must accommodate such “jumping around”.  Anyway, I have been working with some early 80’s era program source code - a custom application developed strictly to do the task required - without consideration of the requirement for minor “variations” in the performance of a task.

The more closely I look at the code the more areas I find that were obviously added into the processing as these “variations” in requirements arose.  These variations might be triggered by different customer requirements - and they were “hard-coded” into the program - IF this cust, do this, ELSE do that.   Further, these exceptions then became nested - IF this custid, do that, ELSE IF this custid, do the other thing.  You get the picture (at least if you’ve ever worked with non object-oriented code). 

Coming back to the idea of applications being “too” automated - I believe that many times in the development of an application not enough consideration is given to the nature of “exceptions” to the business process the application must handle.  I would consider any application with specific processing coded into the app for a specific customer to be heading into the “too automated” category.  Yet, building a process which allows for multiple “variations” into the application - in a horizontal manner rather than vertical is certainly appropriate.