Why systems fail (and why it's rarely the software)

Every failed digital transformation has a post-mortem, and almost every post-mortem blames the technology. The vendor was wrong. The platform was wrong. The integration was harder than expected.

Look closer and a different pattern appears. The software usually worked. What failed was the system around the software — the incentives that made staff route around it, the processes that were digitised without being redesigned, the ownership that evaporated the day the consultants left.

A tool changes what is possible. Only a system changes what actually happens.

This is the working thesis of everything I build: treat the institution as the system, and the software as one component in it. Design the component brilliantly — but design the system first.