What retail tech leaders are really talking about: March's Retail Hive round tables

We were back at The Retail Hive Tech Leaders event this March, hosting round table discussions on derisking major IT change and ensuring fast, successful transitions.

Held under Chatham House rules, the conversations were candid, sometimes uncomfortable, and long overdue. 

We structured discussions around four areas:

• Why programmes slip and how to avoid it upfront
• Full ecosystem testing
• Whether failures come from people or systems
• What volumes you should actually be stress testing to.

For the full details, view the digest. Here's a summary what the group surfaced: 

Slippage starts earlier than you think 

When we asked leaders to identify the first warning sign from their last programme that slipped, nobody pointed to a technical failure. Issues linked back to strategy, scope assumptions, governance gaps, and pressure to start before a programme was truly ready.  

"Tested" means different things to different people 

Integrations, third-party dependencies, data flows, and legacy systems are frequently assumed to work rather than verified, and those are exactly the parts that break first in production.  

E2E test confidence needs clear ownership, and value stream mapping of the testing process was viewed as a practical, underused tool for understanding where the critical scenarios actually sit. 

The real culprit is rarely the technology 

The most consistent theme of the day: when programmes fail, it's almost never because the systems weren't good enough. Skills gaps surface too late. Incentive structures such as bonuses and exec pressure push teams faster than the risk profile allows.  

The round table participants all agreed for a need to involve all relevant teams in UAT, test your rollback plan (not just document it), and put culture and stakeholder engagement on the agenda at every stage. 

Stress testing is about learning, not just confirming  

Most organisations test against last year's peak. Fewer account for the compounding effects of promotions, bad data, or partial outages.  

In many cases, nobody has clear ownership of signing off that performance risk is 'acceptable'  which means nobody is truly owning that call. 

One phrase that stuck with us: change should be exhilarating. Getting the basics right and keeping sight of why you're doing the programme in the first place are what make that possible. 

We're grateful to everyone who took part and shared so openly. Download the full digest below. 

About The Retail Hive

The Retail Hive brings senior retailers together to soundboard, benchmark, and collaborate as a collective. It provides safe, co-owned environments for retailers and partners to build meaningful relationships and promote best practice.