Root cause is always people

When I was a tech vendor I enjoyed displacing competitor product with ours, but I knew every time there was nothing wrong with the competitive tool, just the way it was implemented (process/procedure) and used (people/culture).

As an IT industry we are starting to mature to the point where we don't so often blame the technology tools. Now we more often blame the process "tool", e.g. ITIL, Lean, Agile...

Still wrong. It's always a people problem. I'm growing more and more confident about that "always". Root cause is always people. There are a tiny number of component failures that take us out that maybe can't be laid at someone's door. But so often even they failed because someone didn't check compatibility or someone loaded the wrong microcode, or someone wasn't keeping up with maintenance schedules, or someone bought an under-spec device, or someone...

It's people. Systems fail because of people. Projects fail because of people. Changes fail because of people.

Good processes can cope with crap technology (and provide the specs for good technology). Good people cope with crap processes (and fix them). But technology doesn't fix process and process doesn't fix people.