Many organizations face a major hidden obstacle with technical debt: people management for those who have a vested interest in the complexity and customization. They have established their careers on building and feeding this technical debt. As a result, they perceive removing that technical debt as a direct threat to their job stability. The change resistance and people issues slow, or in some cases prevent, badly needed changes– even before making the transition to Digital Business. Is it any wonder so many digital initiatives struggle or fail to achieve desired outcomes?
Not Considering the Human Impact of the Change Was Naïve
Several years ago, I worked on a project at a Fortune 50 company with a major technical debt issue. Their environment was incredibly complicated– so complicated that even though I had done SAP projects for nearly twenty years, I spent almost four months coming up to speed on many of the changes. Generally, new hires took six to twelve months to get up to speed. (At that time, I was one of a rare handful of people who had broad exposure to the the transaction processing requirements, customer contract interactions, and accounting requirements for this area.)
Even as someone who prides himself on “hitting the ground running on day one,” it took me some time to realize the SAP logo on the user interface was only for show. Vast portions of the application had been almost rewritten to the point that this company might as well have replaced the SAP logo with their company logo.
And Then It Hit Me!
In evaluating the environment for de-customizing opportunities, one area stood out. This area had many years of development and a small development team dedicated to its care and feeding. However, a standard solution option would fit 80-90% of the requirement with only configuration. I demonstrated this solution to the core team as an example candidate of how to move back to standard. As the demo was nearly complete, the team started to realize that this didn’t need to be as hard or complicated. At that point, the leader of the team for this area asked, “If we change this, then what are we supposed to do?”
Then he said, “We can’t make this change. We’ve spent too many years building this!”
The transparency of the response caught me off guard. Even with my experience, I was naïve in not considering the human impact of the change. The people side of moving back to standard became apparent to everyone. As the awareness of the impact to the IT department spread through the group, “slow walking” and “analysis paralysis” started to spread. I learned a significant lesson for reducing technical debt: it is not just a business change management issue, but an IT department change issue as well. Don’t underestimate the amount of change in your own IT area.
Re-Tool to Be Cool!
I betray my age here. People rarely say “Cool!” anymore. However, the idea is simple: The simplification, modernization, and technical debt reduction effort starts with considering the impact to the IT department.
How will you handle job, function, and career changes for your employees? IT employees continue to be in demand and will be for the foreseeable future. Using offshore labor arbitrage efforts for your teams to handle entrenched resistance isn’t always the smart play.
So, how do you handle this?
- Provide a future state vision of modernizing and simplifying.
- Define the future state skills, capabilities, and organizational model.
- Determine the level of interest for these new skills and capabilities within your employees.
- Arrange for re-tooling through training and skill development.
- Make it really easy for anyone who does not want to be re-skilled to find alternative work.
Work Alternatives for Employees Resistant to the Future Direction
That work alternative item is probably one of the most important things you can do. We tend to be creatures of habit, and some folks just won’t trade in skills they have developed for new capabilities.
For those resources, you should provide them opportunities to work elsewhere (in a non-threatening way). You might work with placement firms or headhunters. Maybe you give them a day off a week, with pay, to look for another job (with a specific end date for their current role). Pay for a resume writing service to help them brush up. Reach out to industry contacts who may need those skills. Essentially, you should invest some time and effort on some type of safety net. This effort helps to keep morale up during the change while reducing toxic grapevine talk.
What ideas do you have? Reach out today, or leave a comment on my LinkedIn or Twitter (X). Have you faced similar issues, and how did you deal with them?
