What is Technical Debt – and How Much Do You Owe?

Over time, has your software network grown into some kind of ‘Cyber Winchester Mystery House?’ That’s the San Jose mansion that Sarah Winchester, widow of famed firearms magnate William Winchester obsessively added onto and ‘renovated’ until it became a bizarre maze, with staircases that led nowhere, and plenty of architectural oddities.

The issue at hand is that, through a tangled web of shortcuts, patches, and ‘workarounds,’ your company’s software system, which perhaps once seem sleek and nimble can grow into a mangled mess, becoming less manageable with every passing day.

This is the world of technical debt: a silent saboteur that accumulates over time, threatening your efficiency.

What is the impact of technical debt?

One way to describe the impact is to think of technical debt as the interest you pay on a loan you never intended to take. Technical debt accumulates when companies choose easy, shortcut IT solutions – in effect ‘jerry-rigging’ the system instead of choosing more thoughtful, sustainable solutions.

While it may seem harmless at first, those negative effects of those hasty decisions compound as your system grows. This slows down progress and creates future complications.

If you have accumulated technical debt, addressing the situation is essential for maintaining a robust, efficient technology environment. Here are eight strategies to tackle technical debt at your company.

1) Identify and Prioritize

As is always the case, you can’t fix a problem until you’ve identified it. This is the first step in managing the digital chaos effectively. Focus on the most critical issues first. This drives you to focus on changes that bring the most value.

Perform a Technical Debt Audit: Start by identifying where technical debt exists. Conduct an audit of your network infrastructure, and processes. Document areas where shortcuts or quick fixes have been used.

Rank and Categorize: Categorize debt based on its impact on performance, security, and maintainability. Rank the most critical issues to address first.

Establish a Technical Debt Register: Once you’ve identified your technical debt, create, and maintain it in a register. This helps track what has been addressed and what still needs attention.

2) Make Debt Management a Component in your Workflow

Like it or not, debt management needs to be part of your workflow, ensuring continuous attention to lessening and preventing the problem. This helps maintain a balance between new development and debt reduction.

Integrate into your Agile Practices: Incorporate technical debt management into your agile processes and regularly review and address these tasks during sprint retrospectives.

Make Time for Repairs: Ensure that this clean-up task id performed by earmarking time for repairs and technical debt reduction. This ensures that potential issues aren’t forgotten.

Keep Track of your Progress: Regularly track progress on technical debt reduction. Use metrics to track improvements and identify areas still needing work.

3) Educate Your Team

This is crucial. By educating your team on how technical debt occurs, it helps prevent new debt and addresses existing issues. Training and knowledge sharing foster a culture of quality and long-term thinking.

Create Employee Awareness: Make sure your team understands the concepts of how technical debt happens and the time-wasting consequences of letting it accumulate. Promote awareness of its impacts on the system and future IT projects.

Training: Provide training on best practices for adopting new technology. Educate your team on how to avoid creating new technical debt.

Foster Knowledge Sharing: Encourage knowledge sharing within the team. Hold regular meetings to discuss technical debt and share solutions.

4) Enhanced Documentation

It’s difficult to understand and address technical debt without effective documentation. It provides a clear reference for current and future team members.

Document your Existing Systems: Establish comprehensive documentation for your existing systems, including hardware configurations, software setups, and network diagrams.

Regularly Update your Documentation: Clearly update and document changes and improvements as they occur.

Utilize Standardized Templates: Keep everyone on the same page by using standardized templates for documentation, which ensures consistency and completeness. Standardized documentation is easier to create, maintain, and use.

5) Continuously Update and Refactor Systems

Updates and system refactoring on an ongoing basis help keep technical debt under control. This involves making small, manageable changes to improve technology quality.

Establish Regular Updates: To improve system quality, plan regular updates. Schedule these updates during less busy times or between major projects. Regular updates help keep technical debt under control.

High-Impact Areas FIRST: Update your efforts on high-impact areas first, then less important areas. Identify systems that are most frequently used or critical to performance.

Make Improvements Incrementally: Don’t try to do everything at once. Approach updating as a series of incremental improvements. Making small, manageable changes rather than large overhauls is less risky and easier to deploy.

6) Optimize your Security Practices

Ensure that changes do not introduce new issues by optimizing your security practices. Comprehensive security measures help maintain system reliability and performance.

Establish Comprehensive Security Measures: Your security practices must be ‘next generation’ and comprehensive. This includes firewalls, encryption, and regular security audits.

Employ Proactive Security Practices: Security practices by necessity should be proactive. Proactive security helps catch issues early and ensures systems remain secure. Update your security protocols and software to this end.

Automated Security Monitoring: Automating as much of the security monitoring process as possible increases efficiency and reduces the risk of human error.

7) Recognize and Manage Dependencies

Reduce the risk of introducing new technical debt through effective dependency management. Keeping track of and updating dependencies ensures compatibility and security.

Keep Track and Update Dependencies: Update all dependencies in your technology environment to the latest versions. Updated dependencies often include security patches and performance improvements.

Use Dependency Management Tools: Using dependency management tools to handle dependencies helps automate updates and ensure compatibility.

Examine and Isolate Critical Dependencies: By isolating critical dependencies to reduce their impact ensures that critical components are well-documented and understood.

8) Encourage a Culture of Continuous Improvement

Creating an atmosphere of continuous improvement helps address technical debt proactively. Encourage learning, celebrating successes, and regular reflection. This drives ongoing enhancement.

Foster Continuous Learning: A knowledgeable team is better equipped to address and prevent technical debt, so provide opportunities for professional development and skill enhancement.

Celebrate Successes: Recognize and reward efforts to improve IT quality and maintainability. Positive reinforcement fosters a culture of quality and continuous improvement. Maybe give plaques or prizes – everybody loves those.