What causes technical debt – and how can you solve it?

What causes technical debt – and how can you solve it? 

Technical debt is present – to a lesser or greater degree – in every company. The term refers to the technical problems that arise from short-term or cost-based decisions that affect the quality of the technology solutions within the business.  

There are several key causes of technical debt. Some of these are easy to identify, while others are only discovered when they create other problems in the business. In some businesses, new leadership – such as a change of CIO or CTO – can result in an audit to uncover technical debt. This helps the business understand where the potential weaknesses may be, and put a plan in place to strengthen the technology stack across the organisation. 

The central causes of technical debt 

Usually, technical debt is incurred by taking short cuts. This often happens for a variety of reasons, including: 

Time pressure – development teams are under pressure to meet tight deadlines in order to get a product to market, or release a new feature internally. This pressure often means that testing isn’t thorough enough, or code isn’t properly written. While the application itself might work in the short term, there will be issues that are difficult to fix – such as adding new features or finding bugs in the system – and can cause significant problems for the business in the long term. 

Poor design thinking – developing a new piece of technology takes time, thought and a clear strategy. Where that thinking hasn’t been done, the resulting application can lack scalability, usability and have other performance issues. There are several reasons why this might happen – design might be outsourced with a poor brief, for example, or an internal team may not have the strategic design experience to manage this important stage of the development process. 

Inadequate documentation – while it might seem less important than the technology, documentation is vital for ensuring that people can understand the design and development strategy and the way the application has been coded. Failing to do this means that future team members are effectively working blind. Any changes they make could undermine the original code, resulting in performance problems. This knowledge gap is a common form of technical debt, and it can have a  substantial impact. 

Limited testing – testing is a critical part of the development project. It’s not just about making sure the end user can use the application properly – it’s about checking the application for bugs and for maintenance issues, so that there is complete confidence before release. Where testing is rushed or inadequate, you cannot be sure that the application is fit for purpose. Potential problems can be missed. Fixing these, in the long term, results in time and cost implications. 

Project brief changes – it’s not unusual for new application requirements to change. It’s all part of the process, with project owners looking for additional features or functionality. The way these updates are managed, however, has a serious impact on the potential for technical debt. Unless a clear system is in place to raise, discuss, design and test new features, the project can become confused, with several people ‘owning’ coding areas and poor communication resulting in functional problems. 

Lack of collaboration – projects need to be regularly reviewed within the team  – and beyond – for them to be successful. Daily meetings, along with using collaborative online project tools, help teams to keep track of progress and responsibilities. This avoids problems caused by working in silos, which can result in things being missed, or duplicated. 

Underskilled development teams – to keep costs down, organisations may use inexperienced developers. While they may have the appropriate coding skills, a lack of project experience can result in problems down the line. Saving money in this way will result in far more cost in the future. 

Legacy technology – one of the most common causes of technical debt is the technology that’s already in the business. Platforms or solutions that are no longer supported by the original manufacturer, or that was developed in-house but never updated, will create inefficiencies. They may also be unable to work alongside newer technologies, restricting the value of investment in those new solutions. 

Identifying technical debt 

It’s all very well to know what the causes of technical debt are – but if you can’t identify it in your organisation, you will still struggle to solve the issues it creates. There are some key signs that you might have technical debt, including: 

• Development speed is slower than expected. 

• There are frequent bugs and recurring usability problems. 

• Systems go down more often. 

• Developers find that code is difficult to modify or extend. 

• New team members don’t have access to reliable documentation about the application. 

• Testing records are incomplete. 

• Easy updates are slow to release. 

• Maintenance takes more time and costs more money. 

• You can’t scale the application when you need to. 

• Manufacturers have stopped updating or supporting existing technology. 

When you discover technical debt, you need to do something about it. Failure to pick this up can negatively impact your business. Investing in solutions to resolve technical problems – and make sure they are fit for the future – is an investment in your bottom line. 

You might want to think about: 

Severity – how much is the technical debt impacting your team’s ability to develop and release features or maintain the system? 

Risk – is the debt leading to potential security vulnerabilities, system instability, or performance issues? 

Cost – how much time and effort is required to address the debt compared to the time spent working around it? 

Visibility – is the technical debt causing noticeable issues for customers? Have you had complaints? 

This will help you to prioritise the technical debt that needs addressing first, and start to put a plan together. At this point, it’s worth talking to external development specialists – particularly those who are familiar with low code applications. 

Low code for solving technical debt 

Low code allows you to design and develop applications quickly and reliably. At ISB Global, we are a proud partner of OutSystems – one of the world’s leading low code platforms. With its intuitive drag-and-drop interfaces, in-built scalability and high security thresholds, low code is a quick and cost-effective way to reduce technical debt in your organisation – making you more efficient and improving customer service.

Contact us to find out more about how we can help you solve your technical debt issues.