Upgrade Our Processes? Not Now, We're Busy

Upgrade Our Processes? Not Now, We’re Busy

When I talk with leaders about improving product development, the response is almost universal: not now.

On the surface, nothing’s wrong: teams are shipping software, customers are using it, the company is hitting targets. With AI, output is greater than ever.

But there are three big problems, all caused by the way of working.

The way of working is how leaders and teams turn ideas into delivered products, and it’s never perfectly fit for purpose. It’s the extent it’s not fit that should worry you. As the tech world changes, fewer organizations can afford to tolerate fitness gaps.

Let’s unpack the three problems:

1. The way of working produces all sorts of negative business effects. Teams don’t consistently solve the right user problems; they respond too late to some opportunities; they often deliver less than the business needs or wants.

2. It generates excessive hidden waste. The waste arises from lossy handoffs, task switching, relearning, rework, abandoned work, and extra steps. None of this shows up in status reports or balance sheets, but it consumes capacity every day.

3. (the most overlooked) The way of working erodes its own capacity. On the product side, maintenance becomes more expensive than it needs to be. On the human side, disengagement and fatigue grow; burnout and regrettable turnover follow; cultural norms drift toward self-protection instead of shared outcomes.

In other words, the system produces visible wins while compromising business performance and its own future viability.

And yet, most organizations, most of the time, don’t change anything.

Even when leaders know something isn’t working, fixing it rarely becomes a real priority. The reasons sound perfectly rational:

“There’s no budget for that.”
“We’ve already increased velocity using AI.”
“Our workload is too high right now.”
“We’re locked into doing X; so-and-so insists on it.”
“We’re just before / after / during a reorg.”

Everyone is caught in a loop: the system creates pressure, and the pressure justifies preserving the system. The pressure grows as new capabilities arise, such as AI. And all this time, the business is hurting.

You can’t break that loop by arguing with the reasons. They’re people’s reality.

Instead, use the age-old sales strategy of naming the pain of the status quo and quantifying its impact. What opportunities were missed? What did delays cost? How much capacity was consumed by avoidable waste? What is the cost of disengagement and turnover? What is the cost of delay in fixing it?

When the impact is concrete and economic, the conversation shifts. Improvement stops being an abstract process initiative and becomes a business decision.

I’ve written a white paper on this topic, including prerequisites and strategies for fixing the problem, that you can use in conversations with management. Get it here.