Your company have grown over the years and your IT-legacy is getting more and more outdated. The demand from business to change increases and the improvements on the IT-side are getting slower and slower.

It feels like your are stuck between a rock and a hard place and have nowhere to run.

Your current IT-landscape is so complex that you can only do small changes and not improve the situation
Large transformation program often fails, takes to long time, doesn’t deliver business value and/or cost to much

The question we have to solve is how to find another route to more modern IT-landscape.

An approach is to reduce the complexity by breaking down the existing IT-landscape and identify dependencies between different parts. A lesser degree of dependency makes it easier to replace parts of the IT-stack. The challenge is often lack of documentation and no knowledge of business impact at the IT-side. You have to take a close look at the current situation before you can do a proper evaluation of the possibilities for a change in IT.

Another approach is to look at products and services from a business perspective. Is the product profitable today and in the future? If not, it may be best to remove the products and the supporting IT-systems. If your legacy consists of lots of systems from mergers and acquisitions, the this approach is more viable.

Worst case scenario is when you have one old bespoke system where you just can’t replace a piece without risking all parts falling apart. This is when your only option is to implement a whole new solution including business processes and make a clean cut to the old world.

Disruptive architecture