Infographic Extinguishing Tech Debt From Your Environment
By Insight Editor / 11 Apr 2023 / Topics: Modern infrastructure Change and training
Technical debt is a wildfire-like problem, draining resources and creating weak points throughout an organization. This infographic presents key statistics, the consequences of tech debt and best practices for stamping it out.
Accessibility note: The infographic is transcribed below the graphic.
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Extinguishing Tech Debt From Your Environment
The drive to modernization is critical and can seem urgent. But when adoption of new technology is rushed and legacy systems remain in place and unintegrated, technical debt builds like a wildfire. Read on to see why it’s important to understand how tech debt works — and how to stop it.
Tech debt: The off-balance-sheet measure of the cost of reworking an approach caused by choosing an easy, yet limited, solution.
Technical debt is the consequence of development teams prioritizing speed or release over perfect code. It’s often the result of applying quick fixes instead of full-scale solutions.
Put simply, tech debt is the enemy of efficiency. It takes the focus away from strategic initiatives. Organizations end up spending more resources, time and energy on maintaining legacy systems rather than on innovation. And unless you tackle it, the debt continues to accumulate and becomes a bigger challenge over time.
Extent of the damage
Largely uncontained, technical debt burns throughout many IT environments, diverting attention away from strategic initiatives and hampering innovation and progress.
According to the annual Insight-commissioned Foundry survey:
86% report their organization has been impacted by technical debt over the past 12 months.
39% now cite technical debt as a top obstacle to innovation, following IT skills and knowledge gaps and budget constraints.
Top areas affected are:
43% the ability to innovate
41% meet service-level agreements
37% avoid downtime
Technical debt is especially problematic given that of respondents continue to rank technology as the most challenging aspect of digital transformation.
Tracking the burn
Technical debt is complex. The way it starts and spreads is complex.
Infrastructure ages in place leading to resource allocation being out of sync with the business.
Technologies go EOS/EOL or are orphaned leading to datasets being fragmented.
New solutions are deployed at minimum, “bare bones” capacity leading to blind spots and vulnerabilities proliferating.
No clear strategy is defined for IT and the business leading to systems and processes are inflexible and difficult to modify over time.
Skills gaps go unaddressed leading to teams being focused only on short-term problems and features.
Organization endorses manual work recovery and point-to-point integrations leading to maintenance and patching are very difficult.
Business Impacts
- Reduced ROI for modernization
- Weak security and increased risk
- Excessive and unanticipated costs
- Transformation inhibited
- Talent retention challenges
- Poor disaster recovery
How to put it out
Stamping out tech debt isn’t easy, but it is possible with steady eorts — and well worth it. Managing your tech debt will boost your organization’s eciency, competitive advantage and ability to innovate.
Start with these three steps:
Identify tech debt in your environment. Change starts with awareness. Bring your attention to the root causes of tech debt and its impacts on the business. Ensure all stakeholders share in this understanding.
Define a plan and allocate resources. Come to a consensus about processes, define a workable plan, and dedicate proper funding and skilled talent for execution.
Bring in outside support. Expert groups like Insight can help your organization clarify issues, create a workable plan, perform the work that needs doing and stay accountable to a timeline.
Proof point
This veterinary firm needed to address its tech debt across 900+ locations — and needed a strategic modernization plan. See how we helped the company refocus its e—orts on transformation.
Want a deeper dive?
This comprehensive guide explores actionable strategies, commonly overlooked areas, best practices, real-world stories of overcoming tech debt and much more.
Transform with purpose.
No matter where you are in your transformation journey, we can help you move forward in a way that avoids technical debt and enables optimal business outcomes. Get started by working with our architects to perform prevention measures and determine the most critical areas to cover first.
Learn more at solutions.insight.com.
Soure: MarketPulse Research by Foundry Research Services. (February 2023). The Path to Digital Transformation: Where Leaders Stand in 2023. Commissioned by Insight.
