Lock-In Is A State Of Mind

Lock-In… Its heard all the time in technical circles. Its a bad thing. Its an undesirable situation. Avoiding lock-in is sometimes a full-time job. Recognizing the potential for lock-in is something that gets called out in meetings often. Lock-In is a concern without an option. Everything is lock-in. The truth is lock-in is just technical debt. It is technical debt that may or may not ever be realized. If it is realized, there is a definite cost. If it is not realized, there is no cost associated with it beyond the cost already incurred and accepted.

Do you agree? Disagree? This is just my opinion being shared here.

I submit that concern of lock-in, is a waste of time and money. Every decision made in tech has the potential for lock-in.

• Decide on a programming language for your project. Lock-in.

• Decide on a hosting environment for your project once delivered. Lock-in.

• Decide on a supporting software stack. Lock-in.

Every decision made is lock-in. So whats the concern? The concern is the cost of migrating away from the decision because a new decision has been made. In other words, the technical debt being realized as a result of change.

Everyone has heard the saying the only thing you can count on is change. If that is accepted, that change is going to happen, then why not just plan for it?

Maybe thats a better way to think about concern regarding lock-in? Its really fear that change regarding the current decisions results in technical debt that would incur unrecognized or planned for capital and operational costs.

So again, why bother about lock-in? Its not real until you enact change that results in the realization of technical debt that must be addressed. Its possible that it may not ever be realized. The shelf-life of the product may be such that the ‘lock-in’ never results in new incurred costs to deliver the same thing again.

In any case, these are just my thoughts when I hear Lock-In. I choose to think about it as potential technical debt. I try to recognize that potential in planning. That being said, I see no point in fearing so-called Lock-In. Change is inevitable. Understand it. Plan for it. Its guaranteed.

One last thought, in this entire post I am not trying to say that vendors and products and their ecosystems do not try to hold on to you once they have you. They most certainly do, and honestly its the driver in some regards for the ideas of everything-as-a-service and recurring revenue. Make it easy to adopt and hard to justify leaving. What I am saying is recognize it for what it is, potential tech debt assuming you change your mind and want something different.