As containers and Kubernetes redefine modern application management, they enable flexible, resource-efficient deployment across diverse infrastructures, whether on the cloud…
Effective Approaches to Manage and Address the Impacts of Technical Debt
No company can escape technical debt. What is its scope? Is it visible or hidden? Is it ignored intentionally or through negligence? These are essential questions you need to ask yourself. Indeed, the obsolescence of IT infrastructure is often underestimated by CIOs and businesses, even though it can slow down the evolution of information system components. Without intervention, the risks of losing competitiveness, profitability, and cybersecurity increase. Therefore, it is crucial to act now to prevent this debt from becoming unmanageable.
Managing technical debt allows you to reduce or even eliminate numerous obstacles that impact your Information System (IS). By addressing this debt, you limit barriers to evolution, particularly regarding maintenance and fixes. It targets outdated and unmaintainable solutions, whether due to the disappearance of the vendor or the departure of key employees, thus depriving the company of essential skills.
Moreover, this approach improves your IS’s capacity for evolution and facilitates the implementation of new services that were previously blocked by compatibility issues. Future developments will also be less costly, as managing technical debt reduces inaccuracies in estimates, planning delays, and unexpected project extensions.
It also enhances the reliability of your IS by limiting production incidents that could cause serious outages. Finally, it contributes to increased satisfaction among business teams by preventing tool and service downtime while reducing exposure to cyber risks. By mastering technical debt, you optimize the management and evolution of your Information System.
The quality and performance of software are essential for ensuring an optimal user experience, while speed is crucial for meeting business objectives within deadlines. Therefore, managing technical debt requires a careful balance between quality and speed.
To effectively manage technical debt, it is vital to approach it continuously and enable your engineering team to:
In this context, it is necessary to:
We recommend starting with the development of a technical debt reduction plan while accepting, in some cases, to “live with” certain obsolescences. To do this, it is crucial to carefully assess your current situation and raise management’s awareness of the associated risks and the loss of value for your business. A solid understanding of these elements is essential for establishing a “repayment plan” and considering a “buyback” strategy, enabling you to evolve your Information System (IS) and remain competitive.
Begin by creating an inventory of existing technical debts, which requires a deep understanding of your IS. Next, evaluate it in terms of functionality, infrastructure, code quality, performance, and security. Identify priority issues while considering the associated risks and the added value that reducing certain debts can bring. There may be instances where added value is non-existent if the cost, effort, or risk to address it is too high, making it more prudent to learn to live with certain aspects of the debt.
It is important to note that quickly eliminating technical debt is not feasible. Involve business leaders in the decision-making process to set realistic goals by calculating the effort/time ratio needed in terms of human resources and integrating this into each new project. This approach allows for gradual debt reduction. Finally, remember that a well-managed information system leads to fewer disputes, reduces pressure and stress on teams, and the human factor must also be considered in the return on investment (ROI).
To identify and make technical debt visible:
to calculate and draw up a list of current debts in 4 steps:
Across Different Aspects: Functional, Infrastructure, Application, Performance, Security, Skills, and Processes
Consultation of teams based on identified aspects .
Examples: code analysis & automated tests, OS/hardware/application obsolescence via mapping, etc.
Once the debt has been identified/referenced:
On the subjects to be discussed, taking into account the risks that this may cause.
with the definition of a debt management strategy
of technical debt repayment processes
to prevent technical debt from developing (Example: good development practices)
over time (reduction of operating costs, incidents, regressions, employee satisfaction)
Deployment of specific tools, solutions and specific services (Development, infrastructure, project management, etc.) by our experts:
(sonarqube…)
(Target :a scalable and flexible architecture)
As containers and Kubernetes redefine modern application management, they enable flexible, resource-efficient deployment across diverse infrastructures, whether on the cloud…
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