Stress

We call Technical debt business debt because it is not a technical team’s problem.

It is a business problem those solution lies in enabling your technical team to reduce the debt. Just like the interest on loans, those can be brutal and stop you for going forwards.

So, without much ado, here is the top ten list!

  1. 🪙 Increased Maintenance Costs — As technical debt accumulates, systems become more complex and harder to maintain. This often requires more time and resources to manage and update.
  2. 🪙 Increased Time to Market — As technical debt slows down development processes, it can take longer to bring new features or products to market. This delay can result in missed opportunities and reduced competitiveness.
  3. 💻 Higher Risk of Bugs and Failures — Systems with high technical debt are more prone to bugs and failures. This can lead to increased downtime and the need for more frequent patches and fixes.
  4. 💻 Decreased Software Quality — Accumulating technical debt often leads to a decline in the overall quality of the software. This can manifest as inconsistent performance, poor user experience, and increased difficulty in ensuring the software meets quality standards.
  5. 💻 Impaired Scalability — Technical debt can make it difficult to scale systems efficiently. As the system grows, the cost and complexity of scaling can increase significantly, often requiring substantial refactoring.
  6. 👥 Reduced Productivity — Developers may spend a significant amount of time working around poorly designed code or systems, which can slow down the development of new features and reduce overall productivity.
  7. 👥Increased Onboarding Time — New team members may take longer to get up to speed due to the complexity and poor documentation often associated with high technical debt. This can delay their productivity and impact team performance.
  8. 👥 Employee Frustration and Turnover — Developers and technical staff can become frustrated when working with systems burdened by technical debt. This frustration can lead to decreased job satisfaction, lower morale, and higher turnover rates.
  9. 💡 Impact on Innovation — Organizations bogged down by technical debt may find it challenging to innovate. Resources that could be used for research and development are instead diverted to managing and mitigating the effects of technical debt.
  10. 💡 Higher Cost of Change — Over time, making changes to a system with significant technical debt becomes more expensive. This is due to the increased complexity and risk associated with modifying poorly structured or outdated code.

And finally, a tiny piece of advice: Make sure to add a monetary value to your business (tech) debt tickets. It does not have to be an exact figure (in fact, this is counter productive as everyone will argue what it should be), but a ballpark. It gives product owners a sense of urgency and helps them prioritize their work. You can thank me later.

Get in touch and we can help you make your software function run more smoothly without the drama.