The appeal of a big modernization project makes sense—fix everything at once. The problem is that "at once" usually means six to 18 months, and your team still has to keep everything running in the meantime. The path to adaptable infrastructure starts much smaller, with one problematic data flow and a framework for compounding wins. Here's how to restore momentum without stopping the business.
"How long would it take your team to onboard a new data source?"
If there's a long pause before anyone answers, or if the estimate comes with a lot of caveats, you're not alone. I ask this question a lot, and the answers tell me everything I need to know about how a team is really doing. It's never about the technical challenge. It's about all the fragile pieces they'll have to work around to make it happen.
Most leaders think the answer is a big modernization push. Months of planning, vendors, migration timelines. I used to think that way too. Turns out, the teams that actually break free from this pattern start somewhere much smaller.
Every organization has one data flow that feels like a live wire. It’s the one people tiptoe around because no one wants to deal with the side effects. Touching it means chasing down issues across three systems and waiting for someone who remembers how it was built five years ago. People leave it alone because they’ve seen what happens when someone tries to fix it.
That’s exactly where the first win usually lives.
Cleaning up that one piece won’t solve everything, but it changes the temperature of the room. When something that’s been a problem for years suddenly works the way it should, it’s hard to ignore. Engineers feel it right away as the team starts to get time back. Leaders see movement without having to stop the business in its tracks. It’s a small fix with a very big shadow.
Here's what I've seen work again and again:
Let me walk through what that looks like in practice.
Once that first project lands, you start getting real signals of progress. Not grand, sweeping change, but a steady shift in how the work feels. Timelines tighten naturally and people stop debating who broke what. The team doesn’t brace itself every time a source system updates. The nervous energy around change starts to fade.
This is the part executives often underestimate. When the pressure eases even a little, the whole operation starts breathing again. Engineers don’t have to guard every integration like it’s a house of cards. They can build without worrying that a routine change will snowball into a week of cleanup.
These are the moments that tell you adaptability is working. You don’t need a slide deck to prove it; you can hear it in the way people talk about the work.
Momentum really starts to show up when a few of these wins stack together. A backlog that felt stuck starts to move as the list of “don’t touch this” items gets shorter. People stop reacting and begin choosing the work they want to take on.
A common example is onboarding a new data source. Leadership usually expects it to be quick. Engineering knows it rarely is. One new source can turn into weeks of mapping fields, sorting out unexpected differences, and chasing mismatches in downstream systems. Nobody enjoys that cycle, and it’s because the system doesn’t handle change well.
When you fix the part of the stack that causes that slowdown, the difference shows up right away. The next onboarding request doesn’t trigger a week of dread. People know they can take it on without blowing up the rest of their priorities. This is how real momentum is built. Not from a massive rebuild, but from steady improvements that make each change less of a battle.
What I want teams to understand is that adaptability isn’t a giant, abstract goal. It’s something you build piece by piece. An integration that used to take two developers most of a month starts to look manageable. A new source that once required a full rebuild can be brought online without pulling people off their existing work.
When engineers aren’t stretched thin, they get to focus on the projects that truly matter. That’s when new ideas show up and people volunteer to pick up work they used to avoid. It’s not magic. It’s what happens when the system stops pushing back on every change.
If you’re unsure where to start, ask your team: “What’s the one integration we keep avoiding because it’s too risky or too messy?”
That's your first step. Not a six-month planning cycle or a business-halting migration. Just one integration that slows everyone down. Clean up the thing that matters most. Give it the attention it deserves. Let the team see what happens when one of their biggest headaches doesn't fight them anymore.
Solve that, and the path forward starts to write itself.
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