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Technical debt is a major concern for global companies across vertical industries. It’s the label for the end product of development teams working at breakneck speed to deliver software – bugs, outdated or misplaced code, faulty documentation, and more.
Tech debt is significant because it is a barrier to progress against increasingly important business transformation objectives. Fundamentally, it limits a company’s ability to scale, operate quickly and respond to changing market demands.
Tackling tech debt requires significant investment. While tech debt is inevitable, it cannot go unchecked. This is becoming increasingly apparent to more organizations emerging from their previous technology sprints. Maintaining code that has a tendency to break is costly and can reduce agility and stifle innovation. The situation is more acute in regulated industries, where legacy systems and inflexible software are commonplace.
To contextualise just how widely the impact of tech debt is felt – nearly 70% of organisations see tech debt as having a major impact on their ability to innovate. Couple this with estimates that 40% of IT balance sheets are attributed to tech debt and it’s no wonder the issue is rising up the priority list, becoming the domain of not just IT leaders, but the wider C-suite.
CIOs can no longer delay taking decisive action. The typical approach to tech debt, which is to revisit products and services after launch to fix problems, is not sustainable. With tech debt accumulating at such a rapid pace, it is not enough to address symptoms without also addressing underlying issues. Instead, organizations should consider implementing the following strategic steps to effectively manage tech debt:
Embrace automated software testing
Historically, software development has focused on releasing minimum viable products. However, this focus on speed has led to higher technical debt. IT needs to focus more on quality. AI tools that enable test automation can help identify, predict, and fix issues before software is released. Continuous monitoring of applications in production helps improve quality and prevents issues from being introduced by updates.
View technology debt as a business risk
Tech debt is often seen as just an IT problem. However, it is a problem for the entire organization. By seeing and tracking tech debt, it becomes easier for everyone to understand the scale of the problem and how it can impact the organization. Understanding the costs in specific business areas creates a culture of shared responsibility and puts it firmly on the leadership radar.
Prioritize the cloud and update outdated software
One way to build resilience is to migrate legacy software to the cloud. This makes it easier to pay down the technical debt that has built up over time and can then be maintained using modern software development approaches.
For example, British Airways announced earlier this year that it was investing £7 billion in a modernization program that will see 700 IT systems migrated to the cloud. This comes after the airline suffered a series of IT outages due to data center failures, including two outages in 2022 that forced the company to cancel all short-haul flights from London Heathrow Airport and another that grounded flights overnight. This case study illustrates the costly impact of maintaining outdated technology and the importance of modernizing and addressing the root cause of technical debt, rather than just the symptoms.
Identify and quantify technology debt
Companies need to establish parameters for acceptable levels of tech debt, so they can then work to ensure debt stays within agreed-upon boundaries. This requires categorizing and tracking using specific tools.
Developers can use code inspection analysis to scan and report potential technical debt discovered, which is then tracked, prioritized, and remediated as part of a continuous lifecycle to ensure secure and scalable software.
Define a robust and scalable foundation
Creating an organizational architecture provides a framework for managing, supporting, and securing technology. Examples include enterprise architecture for aligning business goals with IT, technology architecture for designing IT infrastructure including cloud services applications, and integration architecture for developing robust applications with interoperability in mind. If a new solution does not support the approach, it should not be pursued. Over time, frameworks can evolve to support the changing needs of the business. Adhering to a fixed architecture reduces the amount of debt that is incurred and accelerates the pace of development.
Organizations across all industries are laser-focused on modernizing their systems and applications. Recent breakthroughs in AI and Machine Learning have acted as accelerators for such modernization. Reducing the mounting technical debt burden is essential to achieving this.
By implementing the initiatives outlined, organizations can tackle this escalating challenge head-on, paving the way for continued agile and resilient working while limiting excessive corner-cutting that causes problems. With these priorities in place, companies are in a great position to accelerate the time to value of new technologies and capitalize on them.
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