Technical Debt: A Bit of a Misunderstanding of the Iron Maiden Effect
September 18, 2018
Let’s go back in time. It is 1979 and Lockheed Martin has nosed into the commercial database business. The system was designed around IBM mainframe technology and due to costs and other factors, the Dialog Information Services outfit embraced Hitachi plug compatible mainframes. Now it is 1982, what’s the technical situation?
The answer is, “Nowhere.”
In fact, one can data the slow degradation and eventual marginalizing of the Lockheed Martin operation and the original commercial online business from the early 1980s. The challenges boiled down to:
An inability to perform tasks customers wanted because the technical architecture made the “changes” to deliver what the customer wanted too expensive, too complex, too time consuming, and too different from what mainframe architectures could deliver. And what did customers want? Reports. Yep, a report that showed who used what database. The trick mainframe architecture managers use to discourage a customer from getting a report was to charge an outrageous fee. In fact, a signal that a technical architecture cannot be bent to the will of the customer is a wild and crazy charge for what seems a simple request.
This is an iron maiden. It doesn’t look like much. Put an MBA, accountant, or lawyer running a high technology company inside and suddenly the technology makes its point or points as it were.
A lack of cash and managerial willingness to recreate a business on a more modern computing architecture. For the mid 1980s, the switch would have been to slightly less restrictive computers from non mainframe manufacturers like Digital Equipment Corporation. The money part is easy to understand. Investing in the future would require abandoning a good but slowly growing line of business to confront the risky world of the start up. That’s because a technical shift is just a start up when stripped of the fancy PowerPoints.
A failure to listen to those who explained that a change was indeed necessary. I worked for a woman who carried this message of change to luminaries in the commercial online timesharing world. Although tolerated, the managers smiled and went about their day to day mainframe approach to commercial online services. There is no fix for a person’s lack of desire and inability to listen and comprehend the message.
Okay, so that’s my view of the built in problem with most online services oriented co9mpanies. Against this set of personal ideas, I read “Too Big to Survive: There Is No Bailout for Technical Debt.” The write up makes a good point; specifically:
The only difference between technical debt and financial debt is that costs are more often known in advance when taking on financial debt. Both types of debt are a tool when used intelligently with purpose and a plan to manage it, and both can take a devastating toll when used recklessly or imposed through misdirection or miscommunication.
However, the idea that a manager can avoid the problem I described with the commercial online services business in the mid 1980s strikes me as falsely optimistic. The recommendation that a person should go through the MBA hand waving when the problem is identified within an organization is not particularly useful. The problem resides within the usually small group of executives who have the most to lose when a major shift is required to survive.
To sum up, in my experience, technology based companies are not trapped in an innovator’s dilemma? High technology companies are victims of the technology used to build the business. Many business school students learn about the problem of the buggy whip manufacturer. I have a different view of a high technology company’s getting kicked to the side of the road only to die an agonizing death while waiting for a self driving Tesla to stop and offer the near death outfit a ride to a crowd funding meet up.
The high technology company does not want to get in the Tesla. The outfit’s management prefers to wait for a better offer. Maybe the better offer arrives. Maybe not.
The result is the same. High technology companies become disconnected from what’s happening around them. Examples range from the tone deaf actions of Facebook to the oddly skewed failure of Microsoft in its mobile device business to Google’s social failures like leaking and protesting employees. Amazon is allegedly mounting PR campaigns to explain how well employees fare in a giant warehouse where robots seem to have more fun at work.
My point is that when one creates a business based on a technology and that technology becomes increasingly complicated, the technology will resist being changed. The humans are essentially along for the ride, modifying their world view about change when the implications of failing to make a change are sensed.
In short, we are not dealing with technological debt. We are dealing with an inherent characteristic of technology which seems liberating at first and then becomes a digital iron maiden. When the door begins to close, the pain begins.
Those moving to the side of a road don’t need a lift from a Tesla driver. An emergency vehicle is a better bet, but the likelihood of survival decreases with time. That’s not debt, that’s a far more grim outcome. When one is inside a technology, the door closes. Point made, right?
Stephen E Arnold, September 18, 2018
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