Navigating Technology Adoption in the Enterprise

Rodd Vagg, NodeSource

Contents

The enterprise / startup divide
The necessity of change
Identifying archetypal approaches
Talent Magnet or "The Cool Kids"
The Bolt-on Option: Skunk Works
Leader-equipped
The Empire in Decline
Uncommitted, Risk Averse or Dysfunctional
Uncommitted
Risk Averse
Dysfunctional
Understanding the “Why”
The Path Forward
The Importance of Leadership
Contact us

NodeSource is in a unique position to observe and understand the various challenges surrounding Node.js adoption in the enterprise. We see a wide variety of company types and approaches to technological change. Over the last four years, we have engaged deeply with our enterprise customers: advising, training, and supporting them with our products and expertise through their Node.js adoption journeys. It has been a fascinating experience, and we continue to evolve our understanding of the optimal path through the fraught technology adoption process undertaken by many early adopters of enterprise Node.js.

The enterprise / startup divide

While startups rarely enjoy the resources of a large organization, they usually enjoy a comparative “easy-mode” when it comes to technology adoption. Green-field projects and simpler codebases are part of this story; smaller teams unburdened by the overhead of necessary bureaucracy and layers of management, or by the weighty challenges of legacy systems, all make for easier technology choices within a startup. In a smaller, younger company, pure consideration can be given to the best solution for a specific problem domain.

Once a company has reached a certain size, or has existed for long enough, technical debt builds up, organizational ossification sets in, and bureaucratic creep becomes pervasive. Skilled technologists who thrive off innovation are precisely the people an enterprise needs in order to pursue technology change. Unfortunately, since innovation and excitement tend to be the domain of the startup world, these individuals are more difficult to source for work in large organizations. This dynamic is one of the drivers in the ongoing divide between the two worlds, startup and enterprise, and increases the challenges of technology change for the enterprise in a rapidly evolving technical landscape.

The necessity of change

Most enterprise-scale organizations recognize the acute need for change over time. Many of the benefits of undertaking such a major project impact the bottom line; modernized systems help keep costs manageable, deliver a better experience for customers, and offer a competitive edge. It’s a lucky enterprise that can ignore the regular revolutions occurring in the technological sphere. A large retailer that doesn’t let me browse online? Skip. A bank without a nice mobile app? No thanks. Require me to get in my car to rent a movie? Like some kind of caveman?! The wreckage of previously successful large companies caught flat-footed by a nimble competitor taking advantage of technological advances is all around us.

Node.js continues to permeate the enterprise technology stack, steadily replacing the previous generation of web-backend technologies—primarily Java. Node.js itself is a major technological change, and it offers a new kind of flexibility for those who embrace it. Companies are able to carve up monolithic codebases into nimble service-oriented architectures. They are using the ethos of modularity that comes with Node.js to encourage a more adaptive and flexible software culture. Blurring the front-end / back- end divide, speeding up the time-to-production timeline, gaining access to the largest and most vibrant open source code ecosystem in history, tapping into the massive pool of JavaScript talent, these are the reasons we are seeing an enthusiastic embrace of Node.js. But for an established organization with an existing codebase and technical culture, the shift can be painful, and is a minefield with huge risks, just like any major technological shift.

Identifying archetypal approaches

Our experience at NodeSource—of holding the hands of so many large companies making such a change—is that there are some broad categories amongst the types of companies that decide to undergo such a challenge. In fact, we can identify some archetypes that embody both the nature of such organizations and the style in which they grapple with the process of change. Such archetypes also suggest lessons regarding how to best approach the adoption of major new technologies. Cautionary tales also point to the possibility of companies not being properly prepared to take the first steps; perhaps they should instead be working on some organizational or cultural fundamentals. When consulting with our customers, we often delve into the kind of cultural and organizational risks that we see arising out of the more problematic archetypes outlined below, advising on a better path to success.

Let’s start with an easy one, a type of company that is easy for any well-connected technologist to recognize.

Talent Magnet or "The Cool Kids"

There is a certain type of company that invests heavily in its public image as a nirvana for technology talent. These are often, but not exclusively, technology companies—as opposed to companies that simply make use of technology for non-technology business goals. They can afford to be very picky about the quality of their recruits and have high engineering salary spend as a result.

Organizations of this type often (although not always) offer consumer-facing technical products or services, and enjoy a positive brand association among the general public. These talent magnet companies often have prodigious open source output, and are themselves the source of much of the technological innovation that takes place. Simply peruse the list of popular GitHub projects to find names of such companies.

Talent magnet companies are almost always innovators in our industry. They’re not the typical risk-averse enterprise, and they’re not afraid to pave new paths or be pioneers in early stage technologies that emerge. They make a point of solving difficult technology problems via hiring, and the best problem-solvers are usually within their reach.

Like the extroverted artist, these companies often thrive on change; in fact, they suffer when they sit still because their talented staff needs innovation to stay excited and engaged. This is not to say that the process of technological change is easy, turning a large ship is always difficult. But companies in this category are well suited to engage in that change, and are not likely to fail when they make such a decision.

Companies with rich talent resources can easily spawn new teams to tackle new or existing problems in fresh ways. Spreading scarce high-quality talent thinly isn’t a problem they normally face. In fact, spreading talent is often desired because there’s so much to go around and is wasted when applied to a limited set of challenges.

Becoming a talent magnet is no easy task and may even be impossible for almost all enterprises with non-trivial historical baggage. It’s not even clear that being a talent magnet is an ideal state for most companies. The costs are very high, as is the burden of managing and retaining a highly skilled, poachable workforce accustomed to a fair bit of pampering in exchange for their brilliance.

The Bolt-on Option: Skunk Works

There is an interesting variation of the talent magnet that many companies in recent history have used with great success when seeking technological change and innovation. This variation is typified by the “Skunk Works” model pioneered by Lockheed Martin. Beginning in the 1940s, Lockheed Martin began pursuing innovation by sectioning off independent teams from existing bureaucratic systems and giving them a large degree of autonomy. The term “Skunk Works” has become synonymous with this type of business-within-a-business tasked with highly challenging (and risky) goals, often radically different to the rest of the organization.

We’ve seen the Skunk Works model applied to Node.js adoption by a number of the prominent players in our ecosystem. These companies are mostly of the type that wouldn’t previously have been top of mind when thinking about exciting places to be a technologist. Even the oldest company can find benefits by setting up an environment, somewhat isolated from bureaucracy, existing cultural baggage and risk aversion, with a mandate to innovate and permission to fail through exploration.

This, of course, requires highly skilled individuals and it can be difficult to find innovators with the vision to undertake such a challenge. The model must also be supported by strength and vision at the management level. A willingness to tolerate and even justify a greater level of risk and a potential for failure can be difficult to sustain. But if adopted successfully, such an effort usually attracts additional technology talent through the fostering of a reputation for playing on the cutting edge.

Which leads to our next archetype.

Leader-equipped

Our next company archetype invests in high-quality technical leadership to move their organization forward. Unlike the talent magnet archetype, where engineering superstars are sought for even the most junior roles, leader-equipped companies focus on recruiting and retaining leaders who are as exceptional at managing a team as they are at writing code.

From major retail chains to large public utilities, this archetype applies to organizations from a wide range of unglamorous industries. Companies in this category often either don’t have the available funds required to become a talent magnet, or are not able to make that change due to existing public image or brand perceptions. Or perhaps they recognize that technology isn’t their core competency and opt to not over-invest in this field.

Intentional technological change is not natural for large companies. Their corporate environments obey the laws of entropy without the presence of exceptional management skill. It requires insightful or inspired management to understand that investing in acquiring and retaining talented leaders for their technology divisions is the key to success.

Unfortunately, high-quality technical leadership is a scarce commodity. Good leaders are grown over time, but their seed stock is small. Not everyone can be turned into a good leader, let alone a great one. Likewise, quality technical skill is not distributed evenly, with developer quality following a bell curve. The smaller numbers at the upper- end tend to be somewhat enterprise-phobic—talent magnets being a special case here as they are able to shrug off the enterprise image in spite of objective enterprise status. The intersection of quality leadership and quality technical skill is rare and these individuals, once identified, don’t remain in the shadows and are easy poaching targets. They can therefore be expensive to retain, but well worth the cost. In comparison to building an entire team of tech rockstars, navigating technical change with the aid of strategically placed high-quality technical leaders is a cost-effective way to significantly raise the probability of success.

High-quality technical leadership can multiply the value-adding power of technology in an enterprise. It can lead to transformation of organizational structures and attitudes toward technology inside the company that set it up for continued success even beyond the tenure of that leadership.

High-quality technical leadership attracts and inspires high-quality technical skill and can unearth and teach new leaders. It is common to see companies with high-quality and mature technology leadership be a generator of such individuals who spread across the organization or are snatched up by other companies looking to achieve similar success.

The obvious risk of this approach to managing technological change is the low “bus factor” (or “truck factor”, the risk associated with having a small number of key staff), in that success is closely aligned with one, or a small number of individuals. This is compounded by the tendency for these individuals to have high profiles which creates demand for their abilities. In fact, exploiting the public profile of these individuals is one key to growing a great team, creating a devilish double-edge sword!

The Empire in Decline

One sub-category of company exists that could be called post-leader-equipped. These companies have shed, or lost their best leaders and are either relying on a new class of less skilled leaders or simply using the momentum generated during their previous phase (and not necessarily recognizing this fact). How long their success lasts depends on how well their former high-quality leadership set the organization up for success and how many new leaders-in-the-making remain to take their place. Or perhaps it’s simply a matter of how long until they find and acquire new high-quality technical leadership.

If the acquisition and empowerment of high quality technical leaders requires some degree of management vision and commitment, maintaining this operational state requires that same vision and commitment.

Let’s now pivot to the risker end of the spectrum, where technological change meets huge barriers and often ends in outright failure that can have huge ramifications for the future success of a company.

Uncommitted, Risk Averse or Dysfunctional

These three categories do not necessarily overlap, but their results are similar and the risks associated with these archetypes are, in many ways, the same.

Uncommitted

Uncommitted companies either stumble into the technology-change arena, or are forced into it by unwitting (or excessively ambitious) management or changing market conditions. They often have been managing a status-quo for a long period and have little or no expertise with the process of adopting major new technologies. The chances of success are usually low and the process of attempting change can cause severe internal damage or pain if managed poorly.

A common problem for an uncommitted institution is poor management and/or organizational structures that are not strong enough to weather the stresses caused by the technology change process. Unless the technology being adopted is simple, straightforward, and well understood within the organization, failure is almost guaranteed. The results will be painful without solid organizational structures, hopefully including some mature leaders and people-managers who are able to think and act strategically with an eye on the future rather than the maintenance of the status quo.

Ironically, the very fact that “failure” simply means reverting to the status quo is at the heart of an uncommitted company’s struggles. Failure for an uncommitted company is likely to lead to future risk aversion which can trap an organization in an endless loop, unable to escape their current challenges and putting them at severe business risk.

Over time, if the pattern is repeated, this will move an uncommitted company into our next category, the risk averse.

Risk Averse

A risk averse company, of course believes it has good reason to be risk averse, usually because of repeated and/or significant historical failures. This type of company is unlikely to stumble into technological change in the same way that an uncommitted company does but may be forced to by their market or another external factor. Perhaps they find themselves surprised by a nimble and hip startup that is beginning to eat appreciably into their market share, or they see a huge landscape shift looming on the horizon for their market and know they have no choice but to make a move. However, the results of attempting significant technology change within a risk averse company are very similar to an uncommitted one, and their behavior may make them indistinguishable from the outside.

One differentiating property of companies that fit into this category is that they are likely to have stable leadership structures, often even good leaders and people- managers. Unfortunately, the individuals in leadership positions often have reason to be wary of change, or even be expectant of failure. This may result in activities that look like self-sabotage, but are instead either a low tolerance for adversity or the result of senses that are finely-tuned to the signs of failure, leading to a bail-early approach. When existing technology and systems are outdated but still “good enough” to keep the proverbial lights on, it can be tempting to give up on a major initiative, which can be seen as a non-essential expenditure of company resources.

Early phase technologies—like most new technologies, including Node.js—can’t simply be plucked off the shelf and plugged into an existing structure. The ability to learn from mistakes and small failures is critical because the path to success is not clearly mapped out and must instead be discovered and forged. A steady and experienced hand can often help, and NodeSource often finds itself in this particular position with its customers. But making the leap to modernized technical systems requires trust and commitment, commodities that are rare within a risk averse company.

Dysfunctional

A dysfunctional company is one that suffers from severe internal organizational challenges. It can result from misalignment of management staff, bad leadership, no leadership, unchecked entropy and other such problems that typically hound companies large and small. A dysfunctional company may attempt technological change for any number of reasons but the result, again, is basically the same as for an uncommitted or risk averse company, although perhaps with additional strain.

Dysfunction is contagious and can be difficult to stamp out once it sets in to any type of organization. The difficulties associated with attempting to hold the hand of a dysfunctional company while they pursue a difficult change process are not insignificant and the likelihood of achieving a successful outcome is dubious. A dysfunctional company either does not want to be told it is dysfunctional, or resignation to the current state of affairs has already set in and organizational advice falls on deaf ears.

The way out of dysfunction is the topic of countless business development books and beyond the scope of our discussion, but it’s clear that such dysfunction must be properly addressed before attempting a risky exercise such as major technological change.

Understanding the “Why”

The NodeSource experience suggests that the best way to assist an uncommitted, risk averse or dysfunctional organization is by starting with an attempt to identify why change is being sought in the first place. Answering this question can provide key insights that may help in finding paths to success. When the answer is discovered, it’s important to be honest about whether this provides a rational motivation to enter into a process that can be painful, and even fatal for the company.

If the answer to the “why” question boils down to something like “momentum”, or “because everyone else is”, then success in adopting new (particularly non-mature) technologies is very unlikely. Such a company would be advised to undergo some serious organizational and cultural work before embarking on a journey that may do more harm than good.

Once the rationale has been clearly established, and the benefits have been assessed to outweigh the costs, an uncommitted, risk averse or dysfunctional organization must tackle any lack of commitment head-on if they are to achieve anything other than failure. Lack of commitment is a common thread with each of these types of companies. It is also a common ingredient for those who fail to execute on a vision for technological change. Institutional commitment that stretches from management down to those executing and impacted by the change is critical. It is often achieved by the hard work of generating “buy-in” to a plan that can lead the company to a better place.

Finding a way to form commitment that can drive progress and crowd out the instinct to bail or crumble at the first sign of difficulty is no small task. Employees of uncommitted, risk averse or dysfunctional companies are not blind to the realities of their workplace. Lack of commitment to change (often a lack of commitment to anything other than showing up) can simply arise from the lack of faith engendered through experience. However, a common path forged by creative leaders in such organizations is to use the technological change as a way to break the malaise, and then to socializing this explicitly with the staff as a way to motivate and build commitment.

The Path Forward

Thankfully, the probability of achieving successful technological change is rarely zero in any organization, and there is always room for surprise, even in the least likely places. However, the probability of receiving benefit from adopting a new technology like Node. js will always be increased by first addressing organizational and cultural problems.

The Importance of Leadership

Aside from organizational and bureaucratic challenges, a theme for success that may be obvious from the categories outlined above, is good leadership. This should not be a surprise to any experienced business operator. Business leadership and technical leadership are two distinct types of leadership, but are both essential.

The kind of business leadership required to pull off a challenging technology shift involves vision and trust. Vision means being able to look beyond ‘what is’ and imaging ‘what could be’. Or, at very minimum, knowing that ‘what could be’ is something other than ‘what is’. Trust involves business leaders having technical staff that can be trusted. Sadly, too many business operators are blind to the kind of talent that can be leaned on to achieve the type of success we are discussing. But a successful business leader recognizes technology talent, and even better: technology leadership that can be empowered to take on the challenge of modernization.

There are two types of technology leadership that can be helpful to achieving successful technological change. The first could be considered ‘generalist’ leaders and are relatively rare. These individuals are so flexible and talented that they can add value simply by applying themselves to disparate technology challenges. NodeSource has seen a number of cases of exceptional engineering talent—including some people with no previous Node.js experience—given the responsibility for shifting an entire organization. These rare individuals meet this challenge and can personally evolve to fit the radically new responsibilities it entails. They are a joy to watch and usually rise rapidly within whatever new technology ecosystem they apply themselves to. Any organization with such operators should focus on their retention and enablement.

The other type of technology leadership comes from individuals who have excelled within a particular technology environment and may be brought in to lend their skill and expertise—subject-matter experts. These individuals can be difficult to identify but engagement with a new ecosystem before diving in head-first can often reveal them, or at least suggest where to look. After nine years, the Node.js ecosystem is now old enough to be home to a large number of such individuals, with both the Node.js technical expertise and also the leadership chops that recommend them as excellent change-agents within an organization wishing to make a Node.js shift.

Subject-matter experts are sometimes visible in open source, but they are usually engaged in interesting challenges at companies that are making, or have already made, the shift. They write, speak at conferences, and may be present wherever important technical decisions are made because decision-makers recognize them as both subject-matter experts and implementers at the coalface. Most importantly, they have the respect of their peers, so they are never entirely hidden. Seeking them out and listening to what they have to say is worthwhile; hiring them is even better.

It is important to reinforce here that we are considering leadership, not just technological skill. The two should not be confused, even if they come in a single package. Mistaking a great technologist for a capable leader is a common mistake. Some skilled individuals should rise to the “senior” engineering ranks, while others should have their leadership potential tapped for more management-oriented tracks within a company.

At NodeSource, the approach we take to assisting our customers is to offer leadership in various forms. Our consulting, support, and even our training services offer what we like to think of as Leadership-as-a-Service. We try to build the kind of relationship where we can speak into an organization about the problems that we perceive, and provide guidance toward more successful paths. We know that even with skillful leadership in place, augmentation is very often required to make the magic happen. So we are used to working alongside excellent talent and assisting them in their journey.

We take this a step further, however, because we know this approach on its own doesn’t scale. We have an amazing team, full of Node.js talent, but we can only spread ourselves so thin and still deliver benefits to our customers. The NodeSource approach to building our products involves applying our leadership expertise to tools we create. In lieu of a NodeSource expert sitting in your office, we want our products to be able to stand in our stead. Instead of simple, single-category tools, we aim for our product suite to guide and advise you toward the best path for success for your organization. The challenge we have set ourselves is to turn the kind of intuitive expertise our leaders have built up through their extensive exposure to all types of companies, into products that can offer a similar level of intuition.

Its very much in our interest that our customers succeed on their Node.js adoption journey so that’s our first priority. Let’s get to success first, then we can take you to excellence!

Contact us

Trusted By