By Derrick B. Stark
Everything has natural load-bearing limitations. Obvious in engineering endeavors like bridges and tractor-trailer trucks; not so much with business applications and services.
We tend to develop organically as we have cause...and that cause usually presents itself in equal parts pain and urgency. Even the processes we design purposefully are limited by our current operating levels. As such, we build a system that can handle what we need plus the reasonable expectation of growth.
That is exactly how it should be.
As a company grows or its industry becomes more complex, however, it will eventually exceed its capacity to deliver successful outcomes consistently and cynics will revel in assuming it has no systems at all. In fact, the organization simply scaled past its existing limitations. Do not be fooled into confusing overutilization with failure.
Pushing harder on overwhelmed resources makes the problem worse. Full stop. The question, rather, is whether or not to stay within your current limitations or re-engineer to scale up (or down) based on your new needs and reasonable future expectations.
Everything has natural load-bearing limitations. Obvious in engineering endeavors like bridges and tractor-trailer trucks; not so much with business applications and services.
We tend to develop organically as we have cause...and that cause usually presents itself in equal parts pain and urgency. Even the processes we design purposefully are limited by our current operating levels. As such, we build a system that can handle what we need plus the reasonable expectation of growth.
That is exactly how it should be.
As a company grows or its industry becomes more complex, however, it will eventually exceed its capacity to deliver successful outcomes consistently and cynics will revel in assuming it has no systems at all. In fact, the organization simply scaled past its existing limitations. Do not be fooled into confusing overutilization with failure.
Pushing harder on overwhelmed resources makes the problem worse. Full stop. The question, rather, is whether or not to stay within your current limitations or re-engineer to scale up (or down) based on your new needs and reasonable future expectations.
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