Usage

Part of the Brightwork Research & Analysis enterprise software risk model, and a criterion of software measurement and part of the Software Selection Package.

Definition

There are enormous differences between various software vendors in terms of their level of bureaucracy. As companies enlarge, they generally become more bureaucratic, and their efficiency goes down. They make up for this with market power. Market power only helps with marketing and gaining acceptance for an application, not with things that help development or implementations. However, bureaucracy is not identical for all vendors of a similar size, and some small vendors have a shocking amount of bureaucracy.

Bureaucracy imposes a high cost on customers. Questions take longer to get answered. Requests get lost; who can make essential decisions on topics is increasingly in doubt, and political ends up determining what answers are received rather than what is technically true or false. I consider the bureaucracy level of software vendors to be one of the most underestimated risks and costs of choosing among vendors during software selection. Interestingly, I have never once seen bureaucracy listed as a criterion in any software selection exercise by any significant consulting company – perhaps because they rate very highly in bureaucracy themselves.