In technology initiatives, the vendors have numerous motivations to complicate simple things.
The greater the complexity, the more professional service hours are necessary to finish the work. Adding to the professional service’s bottom line. Further, more software licences/hardware may also be necessary, which means additional commissions for the sales team. Similarly, as the scope and complexity of the project grow, contracts and secondments on the customer side may need to be extended. This incentivises employees to stay with the company for a longer period. As a result, except for the client (the project sponsor), all other parties appear to benefit from increasing project complexity.
The question for project sponsors is – What incentives/penalties are you putting in place to ensure that the project team simplifies the solution and limits the project’s scope?
We must have a strategy for incentivising simplicity in technology initiatives!
