The term ‘technical debt’ originally comes from software development, but it can be applied to a businesses’ broader technology landscape – from hardware, software and integration to networking and security.
The basic idea is that if you continue to sweep technology problems under the carpet they will eventually come back to haunt you. Taking a shortcut, or applying a quick and dirty fix, may save you time and effort in the short-term, but eventually you’ll need to deal with the consequences.
The longer you leave technical debt unchecked the more difficult it becomes to deal with – accruing interest, just like a financial debt. This in turn increases the temptation to leave the issue in the ‘too hard basket’ or declare it someone else’s problem, even though it may be a ticking time bomb. This cycle simply increases the time and effort required to resolve the problem, not to mention the impact on productivity and employee or customer experience.
Consider a simple analogy like your car. If you maintain and service your car regularly, it takes much less effort and expense than if you were to never visit the mechanic – until the day you break down and end up with a bill for roadside assistance, towing and major repairs.
While technical debt can occur in a wide range of areas, particularly when you’re relying on legacy systems, it’s easy to illustrate the concept within lines of software code, where a simple shortcut can have dramatic long-term consequences.
Early software developers chose to save on precious storage space by only using two digits to record a year, rather than four. At the time it seemed like a reasonable shortcut, when the potential consequences were decades away. Over time this simple issue snowballed into an overwhelming industry-wide technical debt that presented as a major issue at the turn of the century.
The moral of the story is that the impact of poor decisions and unaddressed problems compound over time, so it is crucial to nip technical debt in the bud or, better yet, avoid it in the first place.
One of the challenges with technical debt is that it can often be invisible to the business leaders until the debt comes due.
To put it in perspective, the cost of technical debt per average business application is more than US$1 million, according to software intelligence toolmaker Cast. This figure is based on analysing 1400 applications submitted by 160 organisations, covering 550 million lines of code. It found an average technical debt of US$3.61 per line of code.
Calculating your own technical debt should also account for how much of your ‘keeping the lights on’ efforts are due to managing technical debt within the business.
Of course, just like financial debt, not all technical debt is bad. A managed amount of technical debt can actually be a good thing, just like a business may elect to take on financial debt in order to retool or expand operations. Sometimes the quick and easy choice is actually the right choice, to avoid over-engineering and implementing gold-plated solutions. For example, a Minimal Viable Product (MVP) will often contain technical debt to reduce time to market, so the business can seize on a new opportunity.
Such debt is a calculated risk, meaning that it needs to be evaluated and managed at the highest levels, while ensuring the technology strategy remains aligned with the business strategy.
Other forms of technical debt can be the consequences of poor planning, or simply the unexpected or unavoidable flow-on effects from other changes.
While businesses can’t always avoid technical debt, they can get into good habits to prevent it accruing and minimise its impact.
Tackling technical debt is not just a technology issue, it’s a cultural issue – which means the solution needs to come from the top down.
The first step is to develop a culture of thinking long-term when addressing technical challenges, rather than opting for the quick fix. It also requires proactively addressing technical debt as it arises, rather than deferring it or fostering a culture of declaring such issues ‘someone else’s problem’.
Knowing how to effectively manage technical debt requires visibility of the issue, which may include tracking deliberate technical debt so you can see it on the balance sheet. Technology plans and budgets should explicitly consider technical debt, perhaps adopting a chargeback or showback model for business units to highlight areas where technical debt has accrued.
Maintaining legacy systems generally comes with a level of technical debt that must be closely monitored lest it become an unacceptable risk to the business.
This is where code ‘refactoring’ can assist with keeping technical debt in check. More than merely spring cleaning, code refactoring involves continually optimising your code to make it easier to manage and accommodate changes to your environment.
This helps reduce the risk when deliberately introducing technical debt, as well as lessen the impact when unintended technical debt makes its presence felt.
Migrating systems and services to the cloud offers businesses the perfect opportunity to assess their technical debt levels. This includes determining which legacy systems should be retired or transformed to eliminate technical debt, rather than simply replicating your old systems in the cloud.
This is where application and infrastructure discovery tools are key when planning a cloud migration. These tools can uncover legacy applications that have perhaps sat idle for years, letting businesses make a clean start in the cloud rather than wasting resources carrying these dead weight applications into a new environment.
Looking forward, one of the best was to minimise the impact of technical debt on your business’ technology landscape is to avoid tightly-coupled components in favour of modular architecture. The use of microservices and self-healing APIs (application programming interfaces) can reduce the impact of technical debt by reducing the likelihood of one technical issue bringing everything to a standstill.
Left unchecked, insurmountable technical debt can take a heavy toll on your business. Reducing and retiring this debt requires a cultural change, ensuring that you don’t let past oversights jeopardise your business’ future.