Tech Waste

Marty Cagan in “Epic Waste”:

[…] What I believe is the largest source of waste in technology, and that’s waste in large companies. I’m not talking about large technology companies like Apple and Amazon and Google [but] about the thousands of large banks, insurance companies, airlines, auto manufacturers, telcos, retailers, health care providers, and entertainment companies, that spend shocking amounts of money on technology every year for such paltry results.

[Visited multiple companies] from each of these industries and with precious few exceptions, I find these large “IT” organizations, usually run by CIO’s or CFO’s, and operating with horribly inefficient and ineffective methods. They are typically using stakeholder-driven roadmaps, project-based funding and staffing, heavy use of contractors and outsourcing, waterfall processes (even when they claim they’re Agile), no effective product role, and minimal if any UX design. […]

The amount of waste at these companies is staggering. The irony is that they often believe they’re actually saving money. […] They don’t understand that their model is requiring much larger teams, and more importantly, they are not able to operate at the speed of innovation […] Because these leaders don’t understand technology, they make short-sighted decisions and then struggle to connect the dots between their choices and the poor results.