Hunting Tech Debt via Org Charts

Knowing where to look for problems by figuring out who reports up to whom

“Let’s see…. no backups, twenty convoluted stored procedures and old C++ code”

After a couple years in government I used to blow peoples’ minds with a fairly simple party trick. Before going into our first meeting with a new agency stakeholder I would predict several key details of what their problems were going to be. All I needed was the name and title of the person we were meeting.

Nowadays, as I talk other people through their legacy modernization struggles, the first piece of advice I give them is to look at the org chart. On large, complex systems there are too many stones to flip over while looking for problems, but the types of problems organizations have are heavily influenced by their incentive structure and the easiest way to figure out their incentive structure is by looking at the org chart.

On particularly old systems you may even end up doing an overview of how the org chart has changed over time. Breaking things out into sublayers of problems as incentives have shifted. In my book Kill It With Fire, I go into a lot more detail about the nature of incentives: this isn’t about money, this is about how people feel seen. A bonus is nice, but feeling secure in your job because the role you’re playing and the decisions you’re making are in line with what the organization prioritizes is much more powerful. Those are the incentives…