Insurance Solutions | Georgina | 2 December 2021
If you ignore technical debt long enough, you can go technically bankrupt. Your ability to serve new markets and new customers depends on the ease of successfully delivered and managed application code. As your IT technical debt increases, the run cost of IT increases, leaving less funding available to support growth.
Some technical debt is intentional, deliberately planned as part of a business’ strategy. Other times (and often) it’s unintentional, slowly creeping up and coming as a nasty surprise. It can have a knock-on effect on the wider business, and vital metrics such as Total Cost of Ownership can be badly affected.
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Culprits of technical debt
Common culprits behind technical debt problems include:
- Insufficient project and programme planning
- Lack of appropriate talent
- Lack of shared values
- Insufficient understanding of the problems caused by technical debt – especially that of the bigger picture
- Lack of communication between teams on the programme (and IT)
….and more. The list can go on and on, ultimately it’s these common poor practices that accrue technical debt; which is increasing the unwanted spending on programmes.
Solution Assurance is one of the most effective ways to allay technical debt.
What has Solution Assurance got to do with technical debt?
Prevention is better than cure. Not only is this true for financial debt, but it’s especially true for technical debt. Technical debt is one of those expenses that companies don’t always see coming; until they’ve reached a financial bottleneck with it. Calculating technical debt is one thing, but being able to manage and maintain it? It can take years to untangle damage caused behind the scenes. Solution Assurance, when adopted at the right time, can ensure the innovative solutions are delivered on time, on budget – and conforming to the original product as much as possible. (One of the biggest culprits of technical debt is from heavy customisation of a product).
