Review Workaround Dependency

A workaround that was put in place as a temporary fix and that other work has since come to rely on, so that removing it now would break something.

An extra step created to get past a short-term problem becomes part of how the organization delivers work. Removing it now causes failure because people, data, timing, or downstream processes rely on it.

A hidden dependency can be fragile, unsupported, and concentrated in a few people. Improvement work must understand what the workaround now provides before removing it.

A spreadsheet created during a software outage becomes the unofficial scheduling system, and dispatch can no longer operate without its formulas and manual updates.

A workaround dependency is more than a workaround that has existed for a long time. Other operations now rely on the behavior or information it provides.

Temporary became load-bearing.

* [[workaround|Workaround]] * [[friction|Friction]] * [[institutional-memory-cliff|Institutional Memory Cliff]] * [[manual-reconciliation|Manual Reconciliation]]

* [Zhenbin Yang and colleagues, “Workarounds in the use of IS in healthcare”](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2011.08.002) — case study of how system-process misfits create workarounds and how those accommodations affect system efficiency and effectiveness over time. * [Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, *Guide to Reducing Unintended Consequences of Electronic Health Records*](https://digital.ahrq.gov/file/28826/download?token=aD93zIJo) — documents recurring workarounds around health-IT blocks and recommends deciding whether to redesign the system or formally accommodate an effective workaround. These sources support the persistence and operational-risk mechanism behind the Renaissance Solutions term; neither uses the label “Workaround Dependency.”

* Compare with [[workaround|Workaround]] and [[manual-reconciliation|Manual Reconciliation]].