Do You Know How Much Technical Debt You Have?

You started your office network. Business grows, staff is added and ongoing additions to the network take place. If this is not done judiciously, your network can become a mess of outdated and unused things.

It can grow to look like a cyber version of the famed ‘Winchester Mystery House,’ the San Jose, California 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, doors and windows that open to solid walls, and plenty of other architectural oddities.

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

This is technical debt: a silent saboteur that accumulates over time, threatening your efficiency. You don’t get this if you use a good Managed IT Services provider, because a junked-up system slows them down, costing them money.

What are the effects of technical debt?

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, continuously ‘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.

You may be unaware of this issue until the day your systems grind to a halt. If you have accumulated technical debt, addressing the situation is essential for maintaining a robust, efficient technology environment. Here are a few strategies to tackle technical debt at your company.

First, Identify and Prioritize 

This is always the first step, because 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.

Do 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.

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

Create a Technical Debt Register: After 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.

Manage the Debt 

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.

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

Reserve Time for Repairs: This clean-up isn’t going to happen all at once. Ensure that this task is performed by earmarking time for repairs and technical debt reduction. This ensures that potential issues aren’t forgotten.

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

Train Your Team

Including and educating your employees is crucial. By training 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.

Foster Employee Awareness: Be 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.

Encourage Knowledge Sharing: Knowledge sharing within the team is important in keeping everyone on the same page. Hold regular meetings to discuss technical debt and share solutions.

Documentation

Understanding and addressing technical debt is very difficult without effective documentation. It provides a clear reference for current and future team members.

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

Regularly Update: Update and document all changes and improvements as they occur.

Adopt Standardized Templates: Keep everyone in step by using standardized templates for documentation, which ensures consistency and completeness. Standardized documentation is easier to create, maintain, and use.

Updating and Refactoring

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

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

Incremental Improvements: 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, easier to deploy and allows you to observe how it effects your system.

Optimize Cybersecurity

To make sure that changes do not introduce new issues, optimize your security practices. Comprehensive security measures help maintain system reliability and performance.

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

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

Automate Security Monitoring: To increase efficiency and reduce the risk of human error, automate as much of the security monitoring process as possible.

Manage Dependencies

One key way to reduce the risk of introducing new technical debt is through effective dependency management. Keeping track of and updating dependencies ensures compatibility and security.

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

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

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

Create a Culture of Continuous Improvement

Get your team on the same page by creating an atmosphere of continuous improvement. This helps address technical debt proactively. Encourage learning, celebrating successes, and regular reflection. This drives ongoing enhancement.

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

Recognize and Celebrate Successes: Everybody appreciates recognition, so 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.