I've been in the position that I've transitioned from being a small agile company to being assimilated by a giant enterprise and being forced to follow their processes.
So from my perspective enterprises are slow because of a few reasons but I'll list what I think are the most relevant and valid reasons first.
1) Slow and steady is easier to manage when you have a lot of people. Simply summarized.
For example when we merged with other companies to become a giant company we were little silos who all did things our own way. Not only that but some of these silos were habitual doers.
Devops people who went from idea to implementation within days. They were used to walking into the CEOs office and asking for 5 rack servers, and getting it. :)
I loved that climate but what happens when those passionate people disappear and they haven't documented any of what they have done? You end up wasting a lot of time figuring it out with new staff.
So a natural progression was to use project and service managers and then we're already slowing things down a lot.
2) Service packaging. When given a situation like the one described above, what exactly are we selling? No mountain is high enough for us, no request impossible to implement. So clients get whatever they want within moments during this stage.
And then we're merged and become a giant company. There might be a merger of 2 or more smaller companies that worked in this way. You now have a giant mess of custom made services and offers to clients. I don't envy the people who need to sort that mess out.
So this causes you to be a lot more careful and have a lot more meetings before anything can be implemented.
3) More classic reason for slowness in big enterprise is that it is in fact very big and it takes special skill to be able to work with people you never met.
The talent you need might be across the country or in Bangalore. That's a situation you must adapt to. But some people send one e-mail and expect things to get done. No, use the phone! Be proactive but without being annoying.
Setup a case where you track your progress, even if it's just trying to contact a storage specialist in Bangalore. The case will remind you every week to call them until you get them on the phone. Or it will remind you that you've done this 3 times now and you can escalate.
Case management also slows down processes.
4) And of course regulations, also classic. We have government contracts that don't even allow us to get help from people outside the country. And sometimes have such strict rules that it takes weeks to approve a new employee access to their systems.
But a combination of 1 and 2 force you to implement processes and frameworks that tend to slow all things down. And to easier follow frameworks like ITIL for example you get big heavy tools that also slow things down and cause frustration among employees.
These are all my personal observations, I have no training in ITIL or in business management.
So from my perspective enterprises are slow because of a few reasons but I'll list what I think are the most relevant and valid reasons first.
1) Slow and steady is easier to manage when you have a lot of people. Simply summarized.
For example when we merged with other companies to become a giant company we were little silos who all did things our own way. Not only that but some of these silos were habitual doers.
Devops people who went from idea to implementation within days. They were used to walking into the CEOs office and asking for 5 rack servers, and getting it. :)
I loved that climate but what happens when those passionate people disappear and they haven't documented any of what they have done? You end up wasting a lot of time figuring it out with new staff.
So a natural progression was to use project and service managers and then we're already slowing things down a lot.
2) Service packaging. When given a situation like the one described above, what exactly are we selling? No mountain is high enough for us, no request impossible to implement. So clients get whatever they want within moments during this stage.
And then we're merged and become a giant company. There might be a merger of 2 or more smaller companies that worked in this way. You now have a giant mess of custom made services and offers to clients. I don't envy the people who need to sort that mess out.
So this causes you to be a lot more careful and have a lot more meetings before anything can be implemented.
3) More classic reason for slowness in big enterprise is that it is in fact very big and it takes special skill to be able to work with people you never met.
The talent you need might be across the country or in Bangalore. That's a situation you must adapt to. But some people send one e-mail and expect things to get done. No, use the phone! Be proactive but without being annoying.
Setup a case where you track your progress, even if it's just trying to contact a storage specialist in Bangalore. The case will remind you every week to call them until you get them on the phone. Or it will remind you that you've done this 3 times now and you can escalate.
Case management also slows down processes.
4) And of course regulations, also classic. We have government contracts that don't even allow us to get help from people outside the country. And sometimes have such strict rules that it takes weeks to approve a new employee access to their systems.
But a combination of 1 and 2 force you to implement processes and frameworks that tend to slow all things down. And to easier follow frameworks like ITIL for example you get big heavy tools that also slow things down and cause frustration among employees.
These are all my personal observations, I have no training in ITIL or in business management.