Invisible Maintenance: The Quiet Engine of Business Value

Start with this image: a team doubles feature output but customer issues grow by 40% over a year because steady maintenance was ignored. This episode reframes maintenance as intentional investment, not shameful overhead. I open with a short microcase, then translate what business leaders typically assume and what IT actually faces, using concrete metrics—percent of sprint capacity spent on unplanned work, mean time to repair (MTTR), and cost-to-change over time—to make maintenance measurable. You get practical phrases and two sharp soundbites to provoke discussion, a simple 10-minute worksheet prompt to map steady-state costs, and a generalized consulting example that shows the decision sequence turning launches into chronic firefighting. Final takeaways give business leaders simple budget language and IT owners a negotiation script to secure predictable funding. Listeners leave with clear, doable actions to make maintenance visible, fundable, and a source of preserved options rather than a surprise tax. Remember to subscribe and leave a review to support the show.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/business-it-it-business--6867401/support.To continue the conversation, follow Mirko Peters on LinkedIn, where more insights and real-world examples are shared from both business and IT perspectives.