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Technical debt (or tech debt) refers to the consequences of short-term, outdated or limited solutions, and it can have long-term effects on your ability to innovate.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.
TECH DEBT CAN BUILD WHEN COMPANIES FAIL TO:
- Adapt to new changes in requirements and technologies down the road.
- Respond to new changes as they happen.
- Take action, and instead defer to making changes to a little date.
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.
1. Assessing the viability of your new investment
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.
Ask:
- Is this project sustainable — is projected maintenance included?
In some cases, moving to an as-a-service model can limit technical debt in the future. - Is the technology part of a standard offering or a larger platform?
Is there an opportunity to leverage other assets that are part of the platform to lower costs and create standardization? - What are the implementation costs and timeline?
When will your customer start receiving value? - If the new investment is hardware, what is the Mean Time to Fail (MTTF)?
This will allow you to budget appropriately for future equipment in the correct timeline.
2. Understanding your future state
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.
Ask:
- What will the company most likely look like in 3–5 years?
- What do we anticipate could be potential challenges to achieving our goals, based on today’s trends?
- What is the outlook/roadmap for the platform?
Is it growing or shrinking? - Does the predicted ROI exceed the short-term and long-term costs of this investment?
5 Ways Tech Debt Is Stifling Innovation at Your Organization
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 article3. Having a solid data strategy roadmap in place
Frequent 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.
Ask:
- Do we have a data strategy roadmap in place?
- Does the technology or project align to a SAS model or automatic update process?
- Will our data strategy roadmap complement any potential new investments?
- Is our existing data strategy roadmap based on our strategic vision for the business?
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.
4. Level-setting your new investment with your strategic vision and mission
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.
Ask:
- Does this new investment align with our current mission and vision?
- Do we foresee a change in strategic vision that could impact how this new investment aligns with our business goals?
- In what ways will this investment help us better achieve our strategic vision and mission?
- Does this technology/investment have the flexibility to adapt to new business goals as needed?
Webcast: Managing Tech Debt Through Modernization
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.
Additional points for minimizing future tech debt
Technology partners
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.
Ongoing maintenance
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.
Knowing how to skillfully approach tech debt takes expertise and practice.
Discover how Insight helps organizations remediate technical debt and optimize spending by assessing and understanding your current environment, priorities and goals.
INSIGHT CAN HELP YOU ADDRESS TECH DEBT TO:
- Prevent security threats and risks.
- Manage and plan for future state — understanding how decisions will connect to solutions/platforms that the org will build.
- Repurpose technology and resources.
- Eliminate the snowball effect of poor planning.
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.
