8 strategies for accelerating IT modernization

New tech moves from bleeding edge to mainstream at an ever-increasing pace. Consider how fast generative AI went from avant-garde to ubiquity: At under two years, it may be a record.

Feats like that have ramped up pressure on CIOs to not just modernize, but modernize faster so they’re ready to seize new opportunities as they arise by having infrastructure that can support emerging technologies and a team that isn’t mired in maintenance mode.

“There is a ton of competitive pressure to move fast, because those who can do things quicker, better, faster are the ones winning the market share,” says Ricardo Madan, senior vice president of TEKsystems Global Services.

That’s not hyperbole: TEKsystems’ 2024 State of Digital Transformation report found that 53% of organizations classified as digital leaders are confident that their digital investments will meet expected ROIs. In contrast, only 27% of those categorized as DX laggards say as much.

Despite growing pressure to move fast, most modernization projects inch along at a snail’s pace. Recent research found that application modernization took an average of 16 months. And with infrastructure and application modernization cited as key reasons for CIOs’ budget increases this year, according to the 2024 State of the CIO Survey, that pace is not fast enough.

Luckily, there are ways to slash the timelines on those projects. Here veteran IT leaders and advisers offer eight strategies to speed up IT modernization.

1. Think process, not event

Modernization remains a constant item on the CIO to-do list, so the task should be a standard part of IT’s schedule.

“Companies that do well have turned modernization into a process instead of an event. It has to be a continual process or you end up playing catchup,” says Robert Dvorak, president and CEO of advisory firm BlueHour Technology. “You have to have a process that you adhere to; you have to make it a continual function within IT.”

Dvorak worked with one CIO who managed the IT environment like an investment portfolio, ranking components as either buy, hold, or sell. Those deemed “sell” were slated for modernization first, while those categorized as “buys” and “holds” were driving the business or fundamental to the business. Dvorak says the approach may be novel, but it created an effective process for ongoing evaluation, continuous modernization, and rationalization.

2. Create a framework to guide decisions

Michael Bradshaw, who has held the CIO position at Kyndryl since the IT service management company spun off from IBM in 2021, developed a framework around five core guiding principles to facilitate key IT decisions.

Those principles are data centric, platform first, cloud based, automation led, and zero trust (so that everything is secure from the start).

“This helps us move faster, because it’s the rubric for how we make decisions; it guides us,” Bradshaw explains. “Having this framework that outlines the principles allows us not to get bogged down in the process but to remain focused on making principle-driven decisions.”

The framework acts like a position paper, he says.

To illustrate how the framework helps IT move faster, Bradshaw points to how his team approached modernizing the core business systems it had inherited. Traditionally, such an initiative would involve business process analysis, a fit-gap analysis, and process re-engineering — all of which eats up time. But guided by the framework, and the platform-first principle in particular, IT went straight for selecting two new modern platforms and adopting their processes, knowing that software came with good processes and that IT in partnership with the business units could tweak workflows where necessary.

“This allowed us to move at such an accelerated pace,” Bradshaw says, noting that IT implemented and rolled out both Workday and SAP across 67 countries and some 90,000 workers much more quickly than it would have taken with the more conventional approach.

3. Prioritize by value

Modernization for its own sake doesn’t yield good results, nor does it enable speed, says Brian Reynolds, a partner at Guidehouse Digital.

“It’s important to recognize that motion is not always progress. Technology modernization without purposeful application produces novelty at best. Focusing on the right modernization efforts is key to accelerating modernization success,” Reynolds explains.

He continues: “The CIOs we work with aren’t interested in modernizations that aren’t accretive to the organization’s mission, stakeholders, economics, or culture. Rather, the most successful CIOs recognize the importance of taking the time to listen and work to understand where problem experiences and challenges exist. They target modernizations efforts at these unmet needs. This often leads to not only the best, but the simplest modernization solutions.”

4. Focus on the foundation for modernization

CIOs who can pinpoint which modernization efforts will drive business value, and rally the resources required to move fast, are those who stand on a good foundation for such efforts, TEKsystems’ Madan says.

One element that makes up that foundation is IT-business alignment, he says, explaining that CIOs who don’t have that alignment can waste time chasing modernization initiatives that aren’t needed or provide no value.

Second is embracing cloud computing.

Another key element is the ability to score modernization needs based on the value the project will deliver to the business, as well as how each modernization project could accelerate other modernization initiatives, Madan says. There’s a multiplier effect at work, he explains, as a modernization project that eliminates interdependences and unwinds complexities in one area makes other areas much easier and quicker to modernize.

5. Apply agile principles for quick wins

Although legacy tech can be monolithic, there’s no reason that the approach to their modernization should be clunky all-or-nothing propositions. Instead, experts advise using agile principles for quick wins and incremental advancements whenever possible.

CIOs can look for “small stories” and implementcontinuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) to add velocity to the modernization work on those monoliths, Reynold says.

Taking that agile approach and breaking down big projects into those smaller deliverables also means the business sees benefits and ROI faster, says Arijeet Roy, a partner at Guidehouse.

He adds: “CIOs should think of modernization as a marathon that has incremental sprints to build capabilities and services.”

6. Adopt a buy, not build, mindset

IT has come a long way since those early years when it built all its own software in-house. Today CIOs know it’s better to buy most of its software and services and only build the features, functions, or programs for work that truly differentiates their business in the marketplace.

But Kyndryl’s Bradshaw says he sees some CIOs put too many business processes in that “differentiator” category, leaving them and their teams writing more code — and, thus, taking more time — than necessary.

“There are companies out there who think they should be writing everything because their definition of what is differentiating is so broad,” he says. “But as a CIO, I don’t need an IT organization that’s writing apps. I need one managing data and orchestrating the OEM platform base to drive business results.”

7. Identify quick learners

CIOs usually need new skills when moving off legacy tech to more modern systems, and many have — and still do — seek to hire new workers to fill that need. That, however, can slow down projects by months, says Orla Daly, CIO of software maker Skillsoft.

“We no longer have months, and with the shortage of tech talent, we can’t just hire for the skills we need,” she says.

Daly focuses on upskilling her existing workers and, more to the point of adding speed, she focuses on finding those employees who demonstrate the ability to grasp and apply the new knowledge faster than others.

“It’s about identifying those individuals who can pick up things quickly and want to learn,” she explains.

Daly has found that some workers will quickly skill up on some technologies but not others; conversely some workers will be slower to grasp new skills in one area but be the speediest in others. So it’s important, she says, to break down talent and team siloes.

To help identify who might have a special knack for upskilling, regardless of what team they may be on, Daly holds hackathons and schedules learning events “to find those who really gravitate to the new technologies, to find those who really embrace them and are energized.” She then taps those individuals, finding that their energy and enthusiasm help them quickly master and apply whatever new skills are needed and, thus, help move the project forward at an accelerated pace.

8. Be ready to use generative AI to add speed

Research and advisory firm Gartner has predicted that “by 2027, gen AI tools will be used to explain legacy business applications and create appropriate replacements, reducing modernization costs by 70%.”

Generative AI is also poised to dramatically speed up the whole process, says Rajib Gupta, senior director advisor in Gartner’s IT sourcing, procurement, and vendor management team.

“That’s the black swan for gen AI,” Gupta says. “One of the biggest uses for gen AI is solving for the millions of lines of code that we still use and that doesn’t have any documentation.”

Today CIOs and their teams face big challenges converting legacy code to modern languages, often losing data flow in the process. They also face challenges finding enough workers experienced in working with old programming languages, such as COBOL.

But gen AI and large language models (LLMs) can get around these challenges, which drag down the velocity of many modernization projects.

“The LLMs can crawl through the code and tease out documentation, process flow, and business logic,” Gupta says, adding that large technology companies are working on building products that will perform this service, which he expects won’t be ready for enterprise use for a year or so.

Still, he and other Gartner researchers say the technology could transform modernization work.

“The maturity of large language models offers an opportunity for CIOs to find credible and long-awaited mechanism for modernizing legacy business applications in a cost-effective manner,” wrote Daryl Plummer, distinguished vice president at Gartner, in the firm’s announcement of its prediction. “CIOs can create dedicated testing units to test the output generated by gen AI LLMs, while establishing change management and upskilling processes to enable the workforce to maximize productivity throughout the modernization cycle.”