Our thinking: Tech debt

Technology decisions made without strong governance or unified direction usually can’t help but create technical debt. Embarking on business transformation initiatives without adequate guardrails in place can lead to duplication of systems performing the same function, technologies that cannot share business-critical information and an out-of-control proliferation of infrastructures, systems, and applications requiring time- intensive support. Without leading-practice policies in place, you may find that your organization is reinventing the wheel every time it seeks to add new capabilities. It’s like starting a race with weights on your legs and without clear start or finish lines.

Sadly, the rush to the cloud, to SaaS applications, to agile development frameworks and the rise of ad hoc “citizen developer” initiatives are often cases in point. Done poorly, the technical debt they incur can cancel out the gains they promise.

Here are some common ways you can find yourself deep in technical debt:

Inheriting debt through acquisition/divestiture: Management might decide to acquire a company to jump start competitive advantage, with their focus on business opportunity. They might not be paying attention to the acquired technical debt that could come with the package — in other words, to inheriting someone else’s previous poor decisions. Similarly, they might not be thinking about the future post-merger integration and rationalization required to achieve anticipated synergies and attendant benefits from the deal. Either way, the result can be interoperability nightmares and portfolio bloat — duplicated systems, applications, data centers and more. Total cost of ownership could be steep.

Kicking the can down the road: Short-sighted decisions or decisions based on incomplete information — prioritizing near-term benefits or improvements without considering downstream implications and future costs of integration, maintenance and support — are likely to cause problems, sooner or later. Consider, for example, the “COVID effect” where contextually correct decisions have created downstream problems. Many companies, particularly those in certain industries such as hospitality, food service and retail, had to either tighten their belts, reducing available resources, or rapidly deploy new capabilities — curb- side pickup, delivery or both. Pivoting, and rapidly addressing what was for many a life-or-death situation for their business, meant that speed of response took precedence over a fully articulated strategy about how to connect new functionality with their broader technology ecosystem. At the end of the day, however expedient a decision might be in the moment, opting for a short-term “band aid” fix or postponing major effort required to address underlying issues only add to the problem. Technical debt does not disappear if you ignore it; it just grows.

Organizational resistance: Let’s face it. People are often just resistant to change. They may be comfortable with familiar technologies, spurred by job protection motivations or simply reluctant to adopt new policies and procedures. Your own staff can sabotage your efforts to reduce technical debt, hanging on to legacy systems and processes that only weigh you down. Add that technology debt to your tab.

As you evolve and move forward to keep pace with requirements of new capabilities and services, you are likely to increase technical debt, at least for the short term. This is simply a fact of doing business today. But not all technical debt is created equal. There are two fundamental types: the tolerable and the toxic. The first is an acceptable by-product of business transformation — debt you incur as you migrate your business from the old to the new to meet emerging demands and capitalize on novel opportunities. Tolerable technical debt is a burden you can live with and address as resources permit, ideally in accordance with a defined plan.

The second kind of technical debt is toxic. Rather than being the “price of admission” to the modern business landscape, it is more often the product of accumulated changes made outside of a unified roadmap and strategy. It can add cost and complexity to enabling new features later on. It often diverts funding for new technologies and innovation to management of legacy systems, monopolizing the time of engineers who could otherwise do work that furthers business objectives. Other by-products of poorly governed transitions can introduce serious, albeit inadvertent, risk to the organization. Cyber-security may be compromised, making your software and hardware systems vulnerable to mundane data hacks or catastrophic ransomware attacks. Business continuity may also be jeopardized when aging or unstable systems supporting critical business operations fail. Beyond adding significantly to your technical debt load, any of these have the potential to seriously destabilize and undermine your business. Bottom line, toxic technical debt is dangerous. It can divert your attention into putting out fires and mire you in work that does not contribute to forward momentum and delivery of business value. It is best eliminated.

Differentiating between the two types of technical debt is critical and essential to a sensible (and feasible) mitigation strategy. It means identifying the balance that allows your business to operate effectively while addressing inhibitors to business transformation. Your goal is to work around the tolerable debt and get rid of the toxic. An ongoing technical debt management strategy allows your technology teams to more effectively size, value, and control tolerated technical debt while disposing of the toxic.