The Waterfall model of development, in which IT departments design and develop systems based on requirements defined by users, is still widely prevalent in the development of large-scale systems such as core systems. If we put the focus on making use of AI and data, however, defining requirements as in the Waterfall model is impractical due to the need to progress with an awareness of the characteristics and limits of the technology. It is thus important for companies to increase the number of people they have who are skilled in operations, IT and data, and who can thus think of the design and implementation of operations as a unified whole. It has long been pointed out that the knowledge barrier between operations and IT has become lower, and there are often cases of people moving between operations and IT departments. But in making use of AI, personnel should also be skilled in data on top of those domains. Such personnel also need to understand the characteristics of AI, due to the need for humans to be present to improve the accuracy of AI and to ensure the ethical side of its operation, as part of the “Human-in-the-Loop (HITL)” idea in AI development. As developing such personnel takes time, companies will also consider recruiting experienced personnel externally as an option. People skilled in IT and data are, however, in demand across all companies, so recruiting them is no mean feat. Companies thus need to take the medium- to long-term view and work on developing people internally in parallel to external recruitment.
Companies will also need to change the nature of their organizations to make effective use of these personnel. Broadly speaking, there are centralized approaches and autonomous, distributed approaches to this, but hybrid forms may also be possible. Where businesses are small or business models are simple, tacking the issue speedily through a centralized approach is ideal. However, where that is not the case, autonomous and distributed models or hybrid models will be the core approaches. Each approach has its pros and cons, so companies should revise their organizations in forms that are in line with the nature of their businesses and their cultures.