IT projects used to be about – or at least were perceived to be about – building things. That determined not just how the work was done, but also how it was managed and accounted for. That leads to a focus on the production of assets, which in turn depreciate. And treating software as a capital asset has consequences not just in arcane accounting treatments, but in how digital can be measured and managed – and those ways are, this post argues, counter-productive if we want to see sustained continuous agile improvement.
That’s not just an interesting argument in its own right, it’s also a great example of how understanding ‘the way things are done round here’ requires several layers of digging and goes well beyond ‘culture’ as some amorphous driver of perverse behaviour.