Making technical debt visible

Cloud migration has become an imperative for business growth and an organisation’s transformation strategy. But cloud adoption doesn’t stop at migration. The increased reliance on the public cloud to host business applications and data can lead to a complex cloud environment that requires constant care. In fact, according to an IDC study commissioned by Stax, 70% of enterprises say budgets for public cloud have grown since last year, primarily due to the augmented complexity of the cloud environment, and lead to often-overlooked problems such as technical debt.

Decoding technical debt

Technical debt refers to the critical, unfunded technical liabilities that accrue over time, from both deliberate and inadvertent decisions about new technology investments, implementation, architecture, governance and funding. In a similar vein to financial debt, technical debt is not necessarily bad for an organisation. However, it does need to be identified and paid down. But how can you tell you’re experiencing technical debt?

Technical debt comes in various forms, some are visible while others are only partly visible. In most cases, technical debt only becomes visible when it’s too late. Invisible or partly visible debt can cause major issues as it indicates an incomplete understanding of the true scope of a problem. A common example is ‘code smell’. This refers to an underlying problem within a code that can subsequently affect the implementation quality. However, it is important to note that technical debt is more than just an application code problem, it can also apply to the broader architectural environment.

That said, there are some obvious signs of visible debt including poor performance, defects, increased costs, reduced organisational agility and lack of consistency and quality. In the cloud environment, technical debt occurs due to rehosting of applications without subsequent re-platforming or refactoring. Looking closely at some of the causes of technical debt can provide insight into how enterprises can manage it in the long run.

Causes and implications of technical debt

The most common reason for technical debt is the complexity of cloud management, but it’s further amplified when shortcuts are taken to save time. When teams want to urgently meet project deadlines and rush to the cloud, they might speed up implementation but compromise operational efficiency in the long run.

Technical debt may also occur due to legacy inertia fuelled by a lack of existing skill sets and appropriate expertise, dated systems and existing investments. The same IDC research shows 62% of APAC organisations believe a lack of IT skills has delayed their digital transformation journey. Enterprises are struggling to hire and retain cloud experts, resulting in time constraints issues.

If left unaddressed, technical debt can be the chink in any business’s otherwise resilient cloud armour. It can cripple an enterprise by threatening normal operations. It is also the antithesis to innovation and digital transformation, which are both critical for helping organisations stay afloat in today’s competitive landscape. In totality, managing technical debt requires organisations to think of cloud as a platform — and not a short-term project. Cloud management should be an ongoing exercise to continuously modernise the applications rehosted on the cloud.

To safeguard themselves from technical debt, organisations can adopt a cloud management platform, to fully automate, optimise their cloud environment. Using a platform like this can increase visibility over resources and help organisations spot early signs of technical debt. Platforms, like what we offer at Stax, have dedicated teams of experts that can guide organisations on the signs of technical debt and help alleviate them. For example, we can help with modernising rehosted applications through re-platforming or enabling the refactoring of architecture — which fundamentally transforms an on-premise application into a cloud-native application and gives the organisation key benefits like agility, redundancy and scale.

The right cloud management platform can also manage the heavy lifting in migrating to the cloud and keep the platform evergreen and fresh with the cloud vendor’s latest updates. This means your IT team or developers’ time and energy can be freed up to develop your applications, while the cloud management platform provider secures the backend and gives you visibility across the entire environment.

With worldwide spending on public cloud slated to reach close to $500 billion in 2022 according to Gartner, we can expect organisations to continue facing challenges like technical debt. While there is no one-size-fits-all solution to managing technical debt, enterprises must make identifying it and working to reduce this debt a priority to business success in the long term.

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