Applying the Tragedy of the Commons to IT Resource Management and How to Solve It

Whether a large listed group or a small‑to‑medium enterprise, all face the same issue: IT departments are understaffed and demand backlogs are severe.

Hiring more people is not a simple fix because companies cannot increase staff indefinitely; even planned recruitment cannot keep pace with growing demand, leading to a classic “tragedy of the commons.”

The “tragedy of the commons” is an economic concept introduced by Hardin in 1968, describing how individuals over‑exploit shared resources for personal gain, ultimately depleting them.

For example, a group of herders each adds an extra cow to a common pasture because the profit outweighs the cost for them, while the degradation cost is shared by all, resulting in overgrazing and a collapse of the herd.

Applying this to IT, the department’s resources are shared by all business units, each pushing as many requests as possible to secure more development capacity, without a higher‑level authority to regulate demand, thus creating an IT‑specific tragedy of the commons.

The tragedy requires three conditions: (1) collective ownership of the resource, (2) equal usage rights, and (3) the resource is limited and incurs a cost when overused.

When these conditions hold, business units ignore the finite nature of IT resources and continuously chase their own interests, causing severe overload.

Two main solutions are proposed. First, private ownership: converting shared resources into private ones allows owners to manage usage responsibly because they must consider long‑term sustainability.

In IT, this means splitting the department into dedicated teams for each business unit, as large internet companies do, though it may lead to some waste.

Second, covenant alliances: keep the resource public but establish an organization (e.g., an “IT Resource Management Committee”) that coordinates demand prioritization, reviews value of delivered features, and plans future schedules, thereby improving utilization.

Low‑code platforms provide a third possibility: they enable business users to build 80% of their applications themselves through drag‑and‑drop tools, dramatically reducing reliance on the central IT team and alleviating the tragedy.

An example from Fenghua New Energy shows a CIO leading a non‑technical team to develop 400 systems on a low‑code platform in two months, a task that would normally require a 50‑person team for half a year.

Additionally, the article warns about Parkinson’s law (the “pyramid‑rise” phenomenon) where organizations grow in size but not in efficiency, emphasizing the need to increase talent density by hiring top‑class personnel for key positions.

In summary, if an IT department suffers from slow delivery and heavy backlog, it is likely due to the tragedy of the commons; the remedies are private ownership, covenant alliances, and low‑code adoption, while also guarding against Parkinson’s law by strengthening talent.

Finally, there is no silver bullet for improving technical team efficiency; continuous learning and strong leadership remain essential.