Technology businesses are constantly challenged to meet deadlines or get products to market quickly. To deal with these market challenges, best practices in software development may be overlooked, leaving an ever-growing, non-optimized code base with outdated libraries and platforms and workarounds that eventually hinder the ability to maintain and enhance applications technology systems effectively. The passage of time aggravates this problem, as the more outdated the code base becomes, the more companies are exposed to issues in quality, interoperability, and the ability to integrate more innovative solutions. Over time, these shortcuts accumulate, leading to increasingly complex, outdated systems that are difficult and costly to maintain or upgrade – what we now call Technical Debt.
In this blog series, we’ll explore the real-world impacts of technical debt and offer strategies for SMBs Tech Companies to overcome it. We’ll walk you through multiple scenarios we’ve encountered with our clients, detailing how we helped them move past technical debt and to scale successfully.
Waiting can be Costly
Waiting to resolve this issue can make it worse and/or more costly. While sometimes necessary to meet deadlines or market demands, not taking action promptly can significantly negatively impact software products and, by extension, business operations the longer it goes “untreated.”
It’s human nature to wait until it’s necessary to take action, and this action can be forced – through subtle issues that appear in application functionality or availability that might not seem so bad at first – and later turn into an avalanche. It could also be through sudden triggering events, like a security breach, where the hand is forced into a disruptive process of diverting resources from the important to take care of the urgent – and then to clean up the mess left.
The eventual price comes in direct and indirect costs depending on the level of technical debt encountered – and the resulting consequences if left untreated. The longer we wait to take action, the more costly it can be to modernize applications and/or underlying infrastructure.
The Innovation Stagnation Price
Another one of those costs is innovation stagnation. How do you build and manage the newer innovative solutions and attempt to enhance, maintain, and support those infected with technical debt? According to a Stripe and Harris Poll study, developers spend nearly 42% of their time addressing technical debt. A recent Forrester Tech Pulse Survey mentioned that 49% of companies polled face moderate levels of tech debt and that 30% are burdened with high or critical technical debt. How can these companies effectively innovate when so many resources are devoted to resolving the tech debt issue?
This is clear evidence that technical debt is a drag on innovation. This issue must be addressed by allocating financial and human resources to ensure companies don’t fall behind the innovation curve and have the business suffer.
How Tangonet Solutions Can Help – The Road Ahead
Throughout this blog series, we will explore several other scenarios where businesses like yours struggled with technical debt and how Tangonet Solutions helped them overcome it. We’ll discuss practical strategies that SMBs can implement to avoid the pitfalls of technical debt, allowing them to focus on growth and innovation rather than being held back by outdated systems.
If your business is grappling with technical debt and finding it more challenging to scale, Tangonet Solutions is here to help. We specialize in building tailored solutions for businesses of all sizes, offering dedicated teams that integrate seamlessly with your existing operations. Together, we can assess your current situation, eliminate technical debt, and position your business for long-term growth.
Don’t let technical debt hold your business back. Contact us today to schedule a consultation and discover how we can help your business thrive.
Series Overview: Scenarios of Technical Debt
At Tangonet Solutions, we have firsthand experience with how technical debt can impact business success. From dealing with a 1.7-year backlog in features and functionality to handling legacy systems that stall innovation, we’ve helped businesses overcome these challenges through strategic, elastic team integration.
In this blog series, we will explore the real-world consequences of technical debt and offer actionable strategies to mitigate it. Throughout the series, we’ll dive into four specific case studies, each showcasing unique challenges and solutions:
- Technical (and Functional) Debt: a 1.7-year Backlog – leveraging nearshore development teams to clear the technical debt quickly and cost-effectively.
- How One Business Overcame Technical Debt and Modernized – the operational disruption caused by unsupported legacy systems and how Tangonet helped businesses migrate.
- How We Overcame Technical Debt to Elevate User Experience – The Risks and Rewards of redesigning the User Experience and aligning it with Modern Customer Expectations.
- How Tangonet Helped to Overcome Technical Debt – how outdated infrastructure can cripple operations and lead to lost opportunities.
By the end of this series, you’ll have a roadmap for identifying technical debt in your organization, understanding its actual cost, and crafting a strategy to overcome it. Stay tuned as we dive deep into each scenario, offering insights, real-world examples, and techniques to help your business avoid growing technical debt.
Real-Life Experience: No One-Size-Fits-All Solution
At Tangonet Solutions, we’ve worked with numerous businesses facing varying levels of technical debt, and one thing is clear: there is no one-size-fits-all solution. In our experience helping companies resolve technical debt, different approaches have been applied to address this issue from a technical and operational perspective. Every situation is unique, from the numerous variables to the severity of technical debt—from minor inconveniences to applications losing key functionality to even becoming inoperable and requiring emergency surgery—a fire drill. Of course, business requirements play a considerable role in determining the roadmap to resolving technical debt, as highlighted in our series.
We will be publishing a series of blog posts that highlight our different experiences and approaches in helping companies address and resolve technical debt, the unique situations encountered, and how we worked together with our clients to transition the applications and underlying infrastructure, modernizing them to allow businesses to focus on moving forward without being pulled backward.
Take Control of Your Technical Debt
Are you dealing with technical debt in your business? Don’t wait for a crisis to address it. Technical debt is not just a technical issue; it’s a business problem that can have far-reaching consequences. Tangonet Solutions specializes in helping small and midsize businesses assess, manage, and eliminate technical debt.
Contact us today to schedule a call or learn more about how we can help your business stay competitive by modernizing your technology infrastructure before it becomes an insurmountable obstacle.
