Every SAP veteran knows this meeting.
Somebody points at something and asks:
“Does anything still use this?”
And then the room goes quiet.
Not because it’s a bad question.
Because everybody already knows what follows.
A scope.
A workshop.
A few interviews.
A project number.
And somewhere, weeks later, an answer.
I’ve sat in that room for more than twenty years. Sometimes on the customer side. Sometimes on the consulting side.
Sometimes being the person asked to find the answer.
What struck me wasn’t the question. It was what happened next.
The question was about the system.
The investigation was going to ask people.
That always felt slightly strange to me. For years I accepted it because everybody else did.
Then one day I stopped and asked:
“Why?”
Why were we interviewing people about information that already existed inside the system?
Why were we reconstructing something the estate had already recorded?
The assumption was never that the information was missing. The assumption was that obtaining it would always be difficult.
For twenty years I accepted that.
I’m no longer sure I should have.
Some questions should not require a project.
First published on LinkedIn, 13 October 2026.