How does your organization manage the balance between innovation and maintenance of existing systems?

To drive innovation there needs to be a sustainable way of evaluating new technologies. For it to be sustainable there needs to be an easy to use consistent process. Otherwise harnessing the chaos of new technology ends up being impossible - and the rest of the organisation gets frustrated and leads towards shadow IT.

We probably cross a few of these options: Our primary strategy is aimed at reducing the skill floor for all our existing systems to maximize innovation while keeping the tasks associated with maintenance as automated and streamlined as possible. 

This approach ensures that the overhead costs associated with routine system maintenance are minimized and can be managed by senior staff or less experienced staff members equally. Consider this approach being extrapolated across multiple facets of our operations. Over a span of a few years, we have methodically restructured our processes to ensure that a handful of FTEs can effectively manage maintenance across all applications.

Subsequently, the majority of our staff focus their energies on innovation. Every innovative endeavor is aligned with our skill floor philosophy to ensure we do not accumulate unsustainable technical debt. It works in many ways.