Breakfast Briefing Recap: Driving Transformation with Legacy Technical Debt

Innovation

Most non-digitally native companies struggle at some level with legacy technical debt. Often poorly integrated monolithic architectures not only slow speed to market but hinder innovation and deliver poor customer experiences.

We hosted  Boye & Co’s latest breakfast event to give senior technology leaders struggling with these challenges the opportunity to hear insights and recommendations from industry experts and network with peers facing the same issues.

The speaker line-up included Paul Whyte, Head of Systems Engineering at Vodafone, Sam Dart, Head of Digital Technology Services at Sovereign and our Co-founder, James Cannings.

The top five takeaways from the event were:

1. Every organisation has a ‘caravan’
If innovation is seen as the sports car of an organisation, legacy technology would be the caravan that slows it down. By creating a digital experience layer to decouple these two systems, delivery teams are free to utilise new technologies to drive innovation. Having a strong, flexible vision for this is essential.

2. Data shouldn’t be viewed as a ‘monster’
Often data is seen as a ‘beast’ and organisations are afraid of it. Each presentation looked at the importance of changing our thinking around data in order to understand it and use it effectively to deliver value to customers. 

3. Create products not projects
A shift in thinking is needed so that organisations concentrate on the delivery of digital products rather than moving from one project to the next. This will ensure that innovation isn’t limited to the confines of a pre-determined, traditional brief and instead future innovation will be at the forefront of everyone’s minds. It also helps the organisation focus on the outcomes that they are looking for from a product workstream rather than defining functional requirements for the next project.

4. Chip away at your enterprise monolith 
There has been a significant shift away from installing and upgrading large enterprise monolithic platforms as companies try to become more agile and innovative. Throwing it all away and starting again is rarely a practical or realistic option. Instead, start iterating towards a more modern, cloud-based, microservices architecture to chip away at the enterprise monolith.

5. Be brave and lead by example
Cultural change is the biggest challenge to digital transformation and requires a significant shift across the whole organisation. It is important to be brave and be prepared to experience reluctance and scepticism. Empower teams to actively participate in the transformation to drive trust and collaboration.

If you are a senior business technology leader and interested in attending one of our future events, please contact marketing@mmtdigital.co.uk   

If you'd like to learn more about how MMT Digital can help your organisation  drive faster digital change and increased value, regardless of your existing technology setup, talk to us.