This post was originally published on IT Pro Today
There’s a story, probably apocryphal, about a royal leader who presented an elephant as a gift to those who had fallen out of favor. The unlucky recipients were left with a large and expensive problem. They knew they had a valuable animal, and they knew their health depended on the elephant’s health. But the cost of feeding and caring for the creature exceeded the value that they could realize. Ultimately, they went bankrupt, surrounded by piles of … err, tech debt.
This story came to mind when I talked with a client recently. Their complaint was that “engineering” and “the business” didn’t understand each other. Engineering was the elephant: bulky, expensive to keep, hard to move, and incomprehensible. Business was the poor beneficiary, not understanding how to create value from the incredible resource — they weren’t even sure what they had.
Framing the problem this way is a recipe for failure. Engineering is part of the business, often a large part. Engineering leaders must recognize that they need the rest of the business to be healthy, or the elephant will starve. Leaders of the rest of the business must give clear direction to the elephant so that it’s doing useful work for the organization
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