Accelerate, Change or Lose: Colt Whittall on Fixing IT at Scale
Colt Whittall, founder of Bravo17 and former US Air Force digital experience leader, explains what happens when basic IT friction becomes an operational mission problem. His experience shows why a large organisation must listen at scale, diagnose problems accurately and connect technology spending to real user outcomes.
The episode at a glance
- Poorly performing everyday technology can have operational consequences far beyond inconvenience.
- A large, recurring voice-of-the-user programme helped teams see where experiences were failing.
- Whittall calls for “precision-guided tech refresh”: targeted fixes informed by evidence, not indiscriminate spending.
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Four insights from Colt Whittall’s episode
“Fix Our Computers” exposed the human cost of IT friction
The conversation revisits the well-known open letter about frustrating defence workplace technology. Whittall explains how unreliable applications, slow systems and difficult workflows affect people doing important work. The lesson reaches beyond defence: internal technology is itself a service experience.
Collect feedback continuously, not just at annual review time
Whittall describes a short pulse-survey programme reaching rotating groups across the Air Force and Space Force. Pairing this voice-of-user evidence with technical diagnostics created a clearer picture of the friction experienced at different locations and by different users.
Precision-guided refresh beats blanket replacement
Instead of giving every person a new computer and hoping for improvement, the team used information about where failures were concentrated. This helped target the right investments and gave leaders a more defensible case for prioritisation, cost and operational impact.
Mission outcomes matter more than internal IT statistics
Uptime and service desk counts alone cannot explain whether a user can complete a task. Whittall’s account emphasises linking technical metrics with the outcomes people are trying to achieve. The same logic applies to government citizen services, healthcare and other high-volume public-facing operations.
A practical takeaway
Create a joint view of service quality: combine short user feedback with performance data, segment it by location and task, and fund the fixes that remove the most costly friction for real people.
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