Complexity Compounds

After enough years in IT, you start noticing that most technology problems are not really technology problems. Usually, the systems already exist. The engineers know the issues. The business has known the pain points for years. What’s usually missing is ownership and consistency.

A few years ago, I was in an environment running ServiceNow, Salesforce, and NetSuite with overlapping functions spread across all three. None of them were bad platforms. The problem was years of growth and departmental decisions had blurred responsibilities between systems. Teams were entering the same data multiple times. Reporting varied depending on which platform someone trusted more that week. Integrations became fragile. The software itself was only part of the cost. It took time and discipline to consolidate responsibilities and simplify workflows, but once that happened, operations got noticeably smoother almost immediately.

The more environments I work in, and the more mistakes I make and grow from along the way, the less interested I am in shiny platforms and giant transformation announcements. Most organizations run better when things get simpler.