Either way we often sell ourselves short: investing all that effort and resource without ensuring the result will remain and be used. We implement technology without process to keep it working. We implement process without changing the culture to want to use it. We run cultural change programs that don’t change anything. Or we successfully change culture but nothing is done to keep the changes in place, allowing the people to slip back over time.

That mantra may be getting a little worn but it is still true: People, Process, Technology, in that order. Technology is not a solution to anything without the accompanying processes. Process is not a solution to anything without the change to the people using it to make them care. This is true of designing and implementing anything technical. It is just as true of making the results of a technical project endure.

Process

Entrench the technology with processes to keep it fed and healthy. Without a process to train new users, the quality of data will slowly degrade, people will use the tool the wrong way, and functions will fall into disuse. Without maintenance processes, one day it breaks and everyone blames the tool. Without review and enhancement, the technology slips into irrelevance and ridicule.

Look at a technology that has been in place more than a year or two. Unless the processes around it are strong, it slowly accumulates a plaque of obsolete data: codes nobody uses any more, uncompleted transactions, legacy objects that should have been deleted, long gone users … the functionality falls into decay. New parts of the business spring up outside their scope; they fall behind on maintenance and compatibility; hacks and emergency modifications are made in ignorance of the planned architecture or of best practice for that technology; planned enhancements and “next phases” never materialise.

It is important the technology should rest in a supporting system of ongoing planning, architecture, integration, quality assurance, tuning, maintenance and improvement processes. You may prefer to call them “practices” rather than “processes”. Process has accumulated all these baggage implications of formalism, measurement, bureaucracy and pain. Practice sounds a little more relaxed, ordinary, achievable … so long as you don’t add the dreaded “best”.

Incidentally the same arguments apply when implementing any “thing” or “product” (of our endeavours), not just technology. With so much attention given to ITIL, ISO9000, SixSigma and so on, the processes we implement are in themselves things that need supportive processes wrapped around. This is what the service lifecycle of ITIL v3 is all about. So I often prefer to talk about “People, Practices, Things”.

People

Make the processes stick by building a supportive culture around them. If people support an idea, care about the outcome, and take ownership, then even the worst processes will work and people will improve them. Without the people behind it, an excellent process will be ignored, subverted and/or corrupted. Look around your organisation and odds are you can easily find:

The people who wrote all that stuff thought all they had to do was get a boss to order it into effect. They thought if they emailed it out, people would actually read it, absorb it, learn it, and make it part of their working day. They ran workshops and interpreted silence as assent.

Too often, the only legacy a project leaves is cursory documentation and a process delivered in a single briefing session (cynically called “training”), left with people who were only marginally involved. They had none of the glory, they have little or no emotional investment.

The classic example is software programs that are chucked over the wall that divides development and production. Many times the prevailing attitude of those who are left to own it is resentment at the lack of notice and consultation, criticism of the robustness and production-readiness, and a focus on the negatives.

Processes and “things” you build will wither and die if you do not set up a supportive culture to care for them. Cultural change is about communication, education and motivation. Get people informed and involved. Pass on all the IP they need to not just push buttons but also deal with changing circumstance, and give them reasons to want the project to succeed.

As you build an infrastructure to make whatever you are building work, build a perpendicular infrastructure of people, process and technology to keep it working over time. Otherwise the investment is often wasted, or at least never achieves its expected lifetime.