These days, almost all businesses are in some way digital. Whether your primary offering is a software product or whether your business relies heavily on technology provided by vendors for management and logistics. There is a good argument that in this day and age, all businesses are by necessity, digital. With technology playing such a huge part in the success or failure of organisations, why is it that the technology literacy of those who lead these businesses remains so low?
Over the years of working in this space, I've seen a repeated and consistent trend of CEO's that are strategically, operationally and commercially focused - yet lack a solid understanding of how the products their businesses sell actually get made, nor the processes involved in making them. Requirements and strategies are communicated downwards into the technology teams and progress is communicated upwards. Understanding of what happens in that 'black box' of technology is often deliberately obfuscated by the CTO or if communicated, diluted down to such a level where no useful information or context can be gleaned.
Within some organisations, the unfortunate result of this situation is that the technology department's interaction with the business becomes nothing more than an update on delivery and a chastising if they are late. The detail and responsibility, deemed too complex or risky to attempt to share with the leadership team, becomes the sole purview of the CTO. These CTO's are largely ungoverned, with their metric for success or failure based on whether they do (or do not) make the deadline for the next piece of functionality or product release.
There may be some reading this who's immediate thoughts are essentially 'so what Chris?' If the product is getting delivered and we're able to hit the revenue targets why should I care what's going on within the technology team? I've got enough on my plate without having to worry about somebody else's remit or department. I can entirely see the point of view.
The unfortunate reality is that as a leadership team, whether you be the CEO, CFO or another leadership role, your decisions and direction directly impact what happens to the product your technology team build. This is incredibly easy to see when it comes to features or requests for cosmetic changes. What isn't obvious is how your decisions impact what goes on under the hood of the product that generates you revenue.
Software engineers behave in a similar way to any other person constructing or creating when you put them under pressure. The delivery time may shorten but the trade-off is almost always that the quality of what they produce goes down significantly. Again I hear you ask, why should you care about the code that makes up our products? If it works when it ships, who cares? Again, I see your point of view.
The thing is, building software is not like building a house. It's more like building a constantly expanding and forever changing hotel. Every time you add another bit of functionality or try to make a change, your software engineers are having to figure out what was done previously, how it was done, how they interface with or change it. After all that's done, they then need do ensure that what they've done hasn't broken something else.
When this is done correctly and to a high standard, adding to - changing or building on top of your technology and product is a fairly simple process. When done badly, it often takes significantly more time to figure out how to make the change then ensuring it doesn't break anything else - than it does making the change in the first place. You see, the quality of your code and technology stack is a direct indicator of overall business health and your businesses ability to rapidly generate a return from the money you choose to invest in development (ROI) The poorer the quality of your technology estate, the longer it's going to take to get that product, feature or fix to your customers. Ultimately, it hampers your ability to respond and deliver on the rapidly changing needs and demands of your customers. The quality of your technology is directly linked to how effectively your business can generate revenue.
Mature digital leadership teams are actively invested in not just the product features, but in the overall product health and the ability to add to or change it with low business overhead. These teams have reporting on code quality and overall product health along with objectives and measures baked into their strategies to ensure that their software products are responsive to change and deliver business agility. The condition of the technology becomes the joint responsibility of the entire leadership team.
Although it's uncommon to see, exemplar leadership groups have the ability to deeply incorporate technology and engineering strategy into their wider business strategy delivering truly staggering levels of business agility and response speeds. While less skilled teams unconsciously drive technology teams to cut corners and reduce quality - the mature teams make active and informed decisions to temporarily reduce the quality of a set of development to allow the business to respond quickly. They have the ability to 'go fast now' with the discipline to ensure they make time to go back and make good.
In a modern, high performing digital business, the team leverages a ONE TEAM mindset. It's essential that that these leadership teams have a clear strategic focus on ensuring that the software developed, supports business agility. There should be visibility to ensure that the output of development is neither over or under engineered. Low overhead development should be a key principle and tracked metric.
