Years of local technology decisions leave most organisations carrying more complexity than any one team can see. Those gaps can sit quietly for years, then surface as cost, disruption or regulatory exposure once a transformation starts changing what’s already there.
Key Insights:
- Current-state assessments reveal hidden duplication, costs, workarounds and complexity.
- Unseen dependencies can create operational, regulatory and reputational risks.
- Leaders should validate the current state before finalising transformation plans.
Organisations often know less about their current state than they expect. Teams might understand their own areas, but years of individual decisions can create connections that sit outside any one team’s view.
A current-state assessment can expose complexity and dependencies that materially affect transformation planning. Leaders can then see where proposed changes may have wider consequences before the programme moves into delivery.
How technology complexity accumulates
A current-state assessment will often reveal that an organisation is carrying far more complexity than its leaders realise. Once teams start bringing information together from across the business, they can find systems with overlapping capabilities, licences they’re paying for but barely using, or legacy systems that haven’t been revisited for some time.
Years of individual decisions can leave an organisation with more technology than anyone intended. Teams implement solutions to meet an immediate need without always having visibility of what already exists elsewhere in the business. Over time, those decisions can create duplication and make it harder for anyone to maintain an enterprise-wide view.
Complexity can also build through changes the organisation has little choice but to make. Regulatory programmes, for example, can introduce new requirements around data and security. The organisation may need to make those changes, but each change adds another layer of accumulated complexity.
Sometimes organisations don’t realise how far the duplication has gone until they put the numbers together. One business was carrying around 750 licences when it needed closer to ten, creating a potential multimillion-dollar liability. Another had three separate document management systems running across the organisation.
A current-state assessment can also reveal that the technology itself isn’t the problem. Teams may have developed workarounds because existing systems no longer support how they operate, adding complexity around otherwise functional technology.
Once leaders see these decisions together, they can identify overlaps that aren’t obvious when each system or function is considered separately. Building a reliable view of the current state can uncover opportunities to simplify or reduce cost, but it can also expose dependencies and risks that leaders need to understand before they start changing what’s already there.
The cost of a missed dependency
Organisations can carry gaps in their current-state knowledge for years without any obvious problem. Transformation has a way of exposing them, particularly when a change affects systems or processes elsewhere in the business.
When that happens, the consequences can extend well beyond the programme. A missed dependency can add cost or disrupt operations elsewhere in the business. Where customers or data are involved, it can also create significant reputational or regulatory exposure.
The connections around a system often extend across the organisation. Other teams may rely on its data or have built processes around it, and the system itself may support a regulatory control. Unless the programme traces those connections, the wider impact of the change can go unseen.
An example of this occurred at a major Australian bank as it introduced new technology without fully connecting it to an existing regulatory reporting process. The gap went unnoticed for several years and resulted in tens of thousands of late regulatory reports. The bank ultimately faced a multi-million-dollar civil penalty for breaches of Australia’s anti-money-laundering laws. The reporting process was an existing dependency that the technology change needed to account for, and understanding that connection before implementation could have reduced the risk of it being missed.
The impacts can be far less dramatic and still carry a cost. Leaders may approve a technology change for sound reasons and still create additional work elsewhere in the business. If they don’t understand who relies on the system, its data or the processes around it, they can easily move cost or complexity from one part of the organisation to another. A thorough current-state assessment helps them see those connections before they decide what to change.
A useful test: trace the impact of a change
One way to identify hidden complexity is to ask whether the organisation can trace the impact of a proposed change from one end of the business to the other. If a system has been earmarked for replacement, can the teams involved identify what relies on it and where its data goes? If they can’t, leaders may need to look beyond existing documentation and establish how the system is actually used before the programme moves ahead.
The effort required to answer basic questions can be revealing in itself. If leaders need to consult with several teams to establish how a system works across the business, or rely on knowledge held by particular individuals, they’ve identified a likely gap in the current-state picture. While leaders don’t need the technical detail themselves, they do need enough to be confident that the organisation’s current environment can support the business strategy.
An independent partner can help to test whether the organisation’s understanding holds across functional boundaries, particularly where no single team has visibility of the full chain of dependencies.
Bringing current-state findings into transformation planning
Leaders often begin a transformation with a clear idea of what they want to change, but a closer look at the current state can challenge some of those assumptions. It may reveal complexity that has built up over time or show that a proposed change will affect parts of the organisation that weren’t initially considered.
While those findings don’t necessarily mean the transformation needs to change course, they do give leaders a better understanding before making key decisions. Bringing those issues into the planning process means that leaders can decide what needs attention now and what the programme needs to account for as it moves into delivery.
Quay Consulting is a professional services business specialising in the project landscape, transforming strategy into fit-for-purpose delivery. Meet our team or reach out to have a discussion today.
