Answers for Tackling Your (Technical) Debt Problems Head On. Highlights from the 4-Part Series
As the ongoing digital transformation gathers steam, enterprises are at risk of chasing quick wins without considering long-term effects. One concern to watch out for (which accumulates over time) is technical debt.
In this four-part series, I look at what technical debt means for the modern enterprise beyond just bad code and lost hours. I also explore possible routes for technical debt mitigation.
Why debt could be holding back your workplace transformation
In Part 1, I spoke about four types of debt: capex, opex, culpability costs, and lost opportunities. The traditional definition of technical debt usually considers the first two while overlooking other impacts. This leads to severe challenges at later stages of enterprise maturity. Dissatisfied employees, low-performing systems, and a dip in productivity are all warning signs for technical debt accumulation.
Here are a few metrics you need to remember:
● Workplace IT issues are creating a £4 billion productivity “black hole” in the UK
● Two-thirds of business leaders want to accelerate digital transformation to stay competitive, increasing debt risk
● 40% of the time invested in workplace app development is consumed by debt redressal
It’s no surprise, therefore that even at Google (arguably the most future-focused company today), technical debt is a big problem.
“We have legacy technologies that are absolutely business-critical that we don’t want to invest in,” said Kate Matsudaira, Google’s director of engineering. “And did I mention the super high expectations of our employees, with respect to the technologies and the workplace that they’re in?”
To read the full story, click here.
What is causing technical debt?
Part 2 was devoted to decoding the drivers behind debt incurrence. Specifically, three reasons emerged: rushed time-to-market, outdated product design, and over-complex code. As workplaces begin to go digital, the ripple effect of debt at the development stage is likely to be felt across the product lifecycle, leading to new debt in turn.
In my quest to understand the behind-the-scenes triggers of debt, a few enlightening facts surfaced:
● An average developer spends 3.8 hours a week on bad code.
● The 90s search engine giant Netscape Navigator went from 80% market share to near-zero in 2002, primarily due to technical debt.
● Debt is often a bi-product of rapid growth — real estate tech company Trulia admits that it has over 13 years of debt under its belt as part of its organizational growth curve.
At an enterprise level, debt depends on the fragmented nature of IT, calling for a cold hard look at the age, maturity, and design of your IT estate. And this should be supplemented by four best practices for developers. To read the full story, click here.
Next-gen answers to technical debt — a quick overview
Once you understand exactly what’s causing debt at your enterprise, its time to rethink your reaction. It is not enough to simply halt transformation (you’d risk falling behind competitors) and clear backlog. Enterprise-wide debt reduction requires a proactive strategy leveraging one or more of the following routes:
● Do you want to structurally change the development process to nip debt at the bud?
● Can you conduct an architectural debt analysis at your current maturity level?
● Is business value an acute measure for prioritizing bad debt?
● Have you considered industry-standard benchmarking models to assess the long-term sustainability of a software?
● Did you know that there are several ready-to-deploy debt resolution products in the market today?
I zeroed-in four standout products in and providers who are focused on technical debt resolution in Part 3. And their capabilities are augmented by the power of Cognitive technology (in both incremental and holistic debt resolution steps). In fact, Accenture combined Cognitive with a ready-to-deploy product to reduce technical debt by a massive 82%. You can read the full story here.
Digital workplaces are central to a holistic resolution roadmap
Clearly, technical debt is a very real, and often crippling challenge for modern enterprises. 42% of executives, developers, and project managers aren’t even aware of their debt status — and just 10% are addressing it.
A holistic approach towards resolution could turn this picture on its head, replacing debt-ridden infrastructure with modernized and future-ready components. In a nutshell, this would comprise:
● Using Cognitive technology to uncover problem areas
● Adopting the cloud in order to increase transformation efficiency
● Developing an enterprise search strategy that empowers your workforce
● Migrating to a digital workplace
Now here’s where it gets really interesting. Granted that you could still be incurring debt passed on by the original solution developer, but digital workplaces are a far more debt-lite option than in-house IT, collaboration, and productivity tools read Part 4. Specifically, it achieves four clear benefits that alleviate all the negatives of technical debt we discussed in Part 1 (beyond bad code).
In fact, Intel espouses M or Migrate as a key tenet for the TIME strategy, reducing debt by consolidating to fewer, smarter, and more comprehensive SaaS platforms. Click here to read the full story.
The technical debt situation at most enterprises is quite grave, to put it mildly. A typical application on your tech stack contains an average of USD 3.61 in debt for every line of code. As enterprises reimagine themselves as agile, future-focused, and software-driven entities, debt resolution should be #1 on every leader’s priority list.
What are your thoughts on the rising volume and variety of debt in today’s digital economy? Let me know in the comments or share your ideas at arvind@am-pmassociates.com
