Most new systems arrive with an understandable promise: one place for the work, less manual effort, a clearer view of what is happening. Yet a few months later, the team can still be updating the spreadsheet, checking the old shared folder and asking in chat for the information that was meant to be in the new tool.

It is tempting to call this resistance. Sometimes people do need help learning a new routine. But keeping the old route alive can also be a reasonable response to uncertainty. If no one has said which tasks the new system now owns, people protect the work by keeping the familiar backup close by.

A system needs a boundary, not only a launch

Introducing a tool and changing a process are related, but they are not the same decision. A tool can be available while the team is still unsure where the official record lives, which update is required, or what should happen when the new route does not fit. In that gap, parallel routines grow.

Research on information-system workarounds describes this pattern without treating people as simply non-compliant. In a multinational case study, employees coordinated Excel-based workarounds when a mandated enterprise system did not fit important local work. Another study links recurrent workarounds to misalignments between organisational goals, local goals and the formal process. These are context-specific studies, not a reason to keep every workaround. They are a reminder to ask what the workaround is making possible before trying to remove it.

Write down the handover

Before asking a group to use a new system, make a short handover statement. It can be one page. The useful part is not the document itself; it is the decision it makes visible:

  1. What moves now? Name the first task or decision that will be completed in the new system.
  2. What stays elsewhere for now? Be specific about the temporary work that has not moved yet, and why.
  3. What stops being updated? Identify the duplicate file, tracker or channel that should no longer be treated as the source of truth for that first slice.
  4. Who decides when the route does not fit? Give people a clear way to surface a real gap without quietly rebuilding the old process.

The aim is not to force a sudden, all-or-nothing cutover. It is to make the transition legible. People can work with a temporary bridge when they know where it begins, what it is for and when it will be reviewed.

Treat parallel work as a signal

When a spreadsheet or side conversation reappears, it is useful evidence. Perhaps the new route is missing information people need. Perhaps the task changes too often for the current configuration. Perhaps the team has not agreed on ownership. Or perhaps the old habit is genuinely no longer needed, but no one has felt safe enough to stop it.

Those explanations lead to different decisions. That is why an instruction to “use the new tool” is rarely enough. Ask someone close to the work to show the last time the parallel route was used. Then decide whether the system needs an adjustment, the temporary bridge needs a clearer end date, or the team needs a more direct agreement.

Choose one boundary to make real

Do not try to retire every old practice at once. Pick one recurring update that currently exists in two places. Agree which place will become the source of truth, who will support the change and when you will look at the result. If the new route cannot carry that small piece of work yet, you will know what needs attention before expanding it.

A new system becomes useful when people can see how it helps them complete real work. The clearer its first boundary, the less energy the team needs to spend maintaining two versions of the same process.

Further reading