Infographic Best Practices for Minimizing Technical Debt in Your Next Project
By Insight Editor / 18 Oct 2023 / Topics: IT optimization Digital transformation Change and training
By Insight Editor / 18 Oct 2023 / Topics: IT optimization Digital transformation Change and training
Your tech debt reduction strategy can make the difference when ensuring your new tech doesn’t leave you with lots of debt and little return. View the infographic to learn the best practices for minimizing tech debt before you lock in your next investment.
Accessibility note: The infographic is transcribed below the graphic.
Infographic text included for screen readers:
Technical debt (or tech debt) refers to the consequences of short-term, outdated or limited solutions, and it can have long-term effects on your ability to innovate.
Sometimes, companies can make intentional choices that they know will result in tech debt. In other cases, leaders can make well-intentioned decisions based on their data and environment and still have tech debt accumulate as time passes, and technology and requirements change.
Recognizing this and setting the right measures in place to address the accumulation will help minimize the impact of accruing tech debt in your next project. Leaders must be more selective going through the procurement process of building technology stacks (and other investments) to better gauge the level of tech debt new projects will accrue.
The below checklist will help you conduct a preliminary analysis of your current and future state to minimize the level of technical debt your new investment will accrue.
Evaluating the feasibility of your new investment can decrease the likelihood of unexpected technical debt to aggregate. The larger the investment, the more it necessitates a tech debt analysis. This assessment is run to best confirm that the ROI of the new product will far exceed the cost of the investment.
Setting goals is important, but analyzing your future state enables you to see if your goals are achievable based on your current state. Future-state analysis can help organizations understand what new investments will best allow them to reach their intended future state without creating unnecessary tech debt.
Almost every organization has tech debt — what matters is knowing how to identify, measure and manage it. In this blog, Insight CTO Juan Orlandini covers the five most common causes of tech debt that could be stifling innovation at your organization.
Read the articleFrequent changes in your data strategy could lead your organization to amass large amounts of tech debt. A data strategy roadmap can help your company narrow down how you plan to leverage your data to innovate and scale at speed. Solidifying your data strategy roadmap will also help your team understand what type of investment is best according to how you intend to use your data.
Did you know? According to the Insight-commissioned annual survey, tech debt ranks as the #3 challenge to digital transformation in 2023. 86% of organizations have been impacted by tech debt — blocking innovation, causing failing SLAs and increasing downtime.
Organizational vision and mission can play many roles for a business, one of which is helping your team create a basis by which you are measuring your success. Taking a step back to understand how your investment will fit the bigger picture of your organization’s goal can guide you to minimize technical debt in your next project.
If your organization is struggling to manage its technical debt, you’re not alone. Listen in to hear our experts discuss how to manage tech debt and the risks of letting it go unaddressed.
Is the technology partner of the new investment continuing to future-proof its offering?
If so, what is its AI, cyber and new functionality roadmap? This is key to limiting technical debt.
How hard is it to migrate to a competing technology?
Vendor lock-in can be a red flag for future technical debt.
What is the maintenance level of the new investment?
Technical debt is more likely to increase if the system or technology is hard to update or maintain. Technology partners should require periodic updates, and customizations should be limited to allow for required updates.
Discover how Insight helps organizations remediate technical debt and optimize spending by assessing and understanding your current environment, priorities and goals.
Lean on Insight to help you build a strategy to trim technical debt with services and solutions that empower innovation.
Source: MarketPulse Research by Foundry Research Services. (February 2023). The Path to Digital Transformation: Where Leaders Stand in 2023. Slide 15. Commissioned by Insight.
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