10 signs that your company is crippled by technical debt

Technical debt takes its toll on companies in various ways. Here are some warning signs that will help you determine whether it’s reached dangerous levels.

‘I’ve seen people jumping on plane parts to straighten them… that’s not how planes are built,’ says Sam Salehpour. As a Boeing engineer, he alerted the public to the company’s risky shortcuts in the production of the 777 and 787 Dreamliner models. Although he alerted management to issues with drilling, they ignored his suggestions and transferred him to another project. There he also noticed the poor fit of structural parts and pressure on engineers to approve work that they had not yet had time to inspect.

When company’s prioritise quick IT solutions over long-term effective and secure strategies, this creates a technical debt. According to Sam Salehpour, this practice in aircraft manufacturing could lead to disaster — and he was right. A recent accident of one of these aircraft claimed over 240 lives.

The technical debt grew

Companies that want to remain competitive can’t avoid modernisation, and up to 71% of its impact depends on technology. However, if the IT team has to resort to suboptimal, one-off and rushed solutions, this often leads to complex integration, ‘spaghetti’ code and, above all, unsustainable technical debt. Then 10 to 20% of the budget goes to new products.

The debt also continues to grow due to temporary fixes that become permanent, or due to outdated systems that are not updated. These steps may seem reasonable at the time, but they create a vicious cycle that complicates future projects and results in hidden costs in the form of lost opportunities and wasted resources.

If the technical debt gets too great, IT teams spend time managing old systems while the costs of integrating new products grow unsustainably. Hidden problems in architecture cause budget overruns and project delays, and companies become unable to fully utilise advanced analytics tools because they are hindered by fragmented data architectures.

As many as 60% of surveyed CIOs said that technical debt in their organization had increased significantly over the last three years. Although it is inevitable to some extent, it is often exacerbated by preventable mistakes. This is why we put together a list of ten warning signs that you are accumulating technical debt:

1. Missing architecture

A well-designed technical architecture not only affects interfaces (e.g., system interconnections), but also the security, extensibility, and maintainability of the software. If a company doesn’t use standard integration procedures, the number of ‘point-to-point’ connections between applications increases. If there’s no unified data model, data quality decreases and costs increase.

Inflexible software, custom solutions without interfaces, or monolithic code that cannot be reused are also risks. If a company fails to maintain the infrastructure needed to operate, it risks slowed down services or system failures, which can affect both employees and customers.

2. Poor alignment of IT and strategy

Companies should take notice if they can’t explain their business strategy or measure the impact of IT initiatives. Another sign is a mismatch between funding and strategic priorities, where resources are allocated without agreement on the total cost of ownership. In mergers and acquisitions, there is a risk of unintegrated technologies, abandoned systems, and inconsistent data.

3. No life cycle strategy

Obsolete technologies that are not yet retired require maintenance and pose a security risk. If data is stored in them, it may become increasingly difficult to retrieve it. Without a clear end-of-life strategy, there is a risk of non-compliance, e.g. if personal data is stored unencrypted.

4. Poor leadership

The speed of technological development leads companies to make decisions they don’t understand — they often implement tools they don’t need. CIOs with a development background tend to prioritise short-term projects without regard to their further development. Furthermore, if the company lacks skills or capacity, it will not be able to deliver products on time.

5. Weak development and maintenance management

If the development process lacks steps such as requirements specification, code review, or testing, the debt grows. The lack of project prioritisation, planning tools, or connection to business value are also risks. The situation is exacerbated by manual testing, poor disaster recovery, and undocumented add-ons.

6. Poor code quality

Sometimes developers use new tools with no clear benefit. Other times, they take shortcuts or ignore best practices. This may be due to insufficient onboarding or lack of training. This risk grows under time pressure, with poor planning, or when external code is rewritten.

7. Separation of development and operations

A common problem is that developers design a product without considering how it will work in reality. This results in cumbersome, error-prone solutions. DevOps tries to solve this problem by connecting development and operations. But similar problems also occur elsewhere — e.g. infrastructure deploys devices without knowing how they will be repaired.

8. Sensitive data in code

Sometimes developers leave login information in the code or set excessive permissions. If not removed before launch, attackers can obtain passwords, certificates, and other sensitive data.

9. Missing documentation

Current technical documentation should describe both software development and infrastructure. If this is missing, the company loses time and money. New developers don’t understand the decisions of their predecessors. Knowledge often disappears unnoticed — due to people’s closed-mindedness or the nature of their position.

10. Insufficient testing

If a company skips testing when developing an application, this results in errors. This commonly happens when there is no quality security support or DevOps with automated testing has not been implemented.

What next?

Technical debt in the areas of security, infrastructure, and processes has also worsened due to the rapid transition to remote work during the pandemic. Most of the steps were inevitable at the time — companies accelerated the transition to the cloud, IT teams became more modest and processes were simplified.

For companies burdened with technical debt, the budget savings are priceless. It often helps to hire an experienced IT specialist who will bring new skills, perspective, and an extra pair of hands. Instead of lengthy recruitment, companies can avoid the impacts of technical debt.

Are you interested in the outsourcing strategy used by brands like WhatsApp, Google, Slack and Skype? Let us know, TITANS can provide experienced people to join your team and help you reduce your technical debt, or even gain an edge over your competitors.