Is that new software the right FIX ?

As digital leaders many of us spend a significant part of our time evaluating, choosing, buying and managing softwares.

The need to buy these softwares can come in various forms and many a times these decisions look like point in time choices to solve a specific issues or a problem. With the advent of SaaS solutions the selection and implementation of new softwares have got lot more democratized to the line leaders. ?While a federated model could support faster innovation, every wrong choice comes with a long tail of overheads to the enterprise architecture if not thought through well.

Hence the need to have a nimble but strong governance in making such choices. Architecture and governance is a learning topic in itself; however, today I want to cover four situations or reasons which are not good enough to add or replace a software in your architecture. It is the responsibility of the digital leaders to ensure the organization is making these choices right. ??????????????

1.??????Leadership change – Everytime there is a senior leadership change in a function or a business unit; the new leaders come with a charter to drive change and show significant shifts in short period of time. Also the new leader comes with experience of software(s) he/she used in previous experiences and changing the same looks like a very logical thing to embed in the overall change agenda he/she wants to drive. Suggest the following approaches to avoid making a wrong decision in a hurry –

a.??????Ensure as part of the onboarding of the leader you are giving him a full view of the landscape, architecture choices and the current strengths and areas of improvement

b.??????Be transparent in both what is working well and what needs help. Focus of discussion should be what process or business need to be addressed better vs software A vs software B.

c.??????Share the journey of change the organization has come through and the effort involved in the same

d.??????Last but not the least if the leader is still insistent for the big change, buy time. Agree to pick this up after a year. This will give enough time to the incumbent leader as well to understand the pros and cons of the decision he/she is wanting to make.

2.??????I want to bring best practices – Many a times leaders are made to believe by software vendors that implementing a specific software will ensure all relevant best practices will come through and the same will transform your processes. What they are saying is the software is designed with features learned from the large number of customers they have, however how these features are converted into processes in your organization is only upto your team.?Time and again it has been proven that best practices come by changing processes and reorganizing in the way work gets done. First process, organization and roles, governance and then comes software.

3.??????Safety net for an upcoming change – There is a regulatory change coming up, there is a new compliance ask, we are undergoing a organization change, etc.. are common set of reasons which make people jittery. Many a times a software with a promise to fix the unknown looks like a knight in shining armour. Softwares can surely be one enabler in managing the change, but the driving team needs to understand and own the same. Saying I will buy this software to protect myself from this change is like putting the head in the sand.

4.??????It is very cheap hence no harm in trying – I visited this seminar and met this vendor. They are offering this to me near free and hence there is no harm in trying it. Most of the time people are not seeing the total cost of ownership when making these decisions. Also there is no free lunch, all near-free SaaS are buying your data for free in return.

While one should allow federated innovation to discover and do more experiments in the company, same should be done with clearly defined guardrails. Work towards change that is meaningful and not change for the sake of it. The final choice on integrating in the overall architecture has to be very well thought through; else one goes through a long tail of costs. Tempting though it may be in some situations as the easy way out, avoid the band-aid approach.

Hope this will help you to make better choices in your decision dilemmas. I look forward to your feedback and suggestions.?