What is technical debt?
The term “technical debt” refers to the cost an organization accrues to fix and maintain its codebase, largely when speed is prioritized over sustainability.
Looking to leave technical debt behind?
Here are our top tips of what to look for in a sustainable software solution
No-code development
True no-code platforms eliminate technical debt by transferring the responsibility for coding to the platform developer. They allow you to quickly build custom applications, workflows, and reports without writing a single line of code, so technical debt is never produced.
Sustainable customizations
At upgrade time, any packaged applications—and their customizations —should automatically inherit new advancements. This prevents your business from being locked into outdated technologies and saves you the time and expense of rebuilding customizations.
Seamless integrations
Any platform should use APIs to make connections with other systems easy, fast, and secure. IT teams can then spend less time maintaining and patching shoddy integrations and more time on mission-critical work.
Automation capabilities
Look for platforms that use AI to automate even the most unique business processes with workflows, business logic, and security capabilities. By automating these routine tasks, your IT team can focus on tasks that add business value and innovation.
Future-proof applications
A truly sustainable platform should be able to uptake and apply new technologies to applications without layers of patchwork or complete rewrites. This becomes a primary benefit of how applications are stored when they are not built with traditional coding mechanisms.
Top contributors to technical debt
- Shadow IT
- Homegrown integration
- System upgrades
- ERP customization
- Pressure from higher-ups
- Developer shortages
The effects of technical debt
- Unbudgeted costs – Your IT team may have to use unbudgeted funds to maintain the system and rectify problems caused by technical debt.
- Inhibited innovation – When your business is focused more on
maintaining its existing ecosystem, it leaves your IT team less time to create new features and functionality. - System performance and stability issues – Poorly written code may cause features or functionality to not work properly, impacting usability and causing an increase in support tickets.
- Difficulty scaling – As your business grows and its software becomes more complex, your technical debt accumulates, making it harder to scale operations to meet demand.
- Increased security problems – When technical debt is not addressed, it can create vulnerabilities and increase the risk of disastrous events, such as data breaches.
The antidote to technical debt: sustainability
The reality is that all code has an expiration date and will eventually lead to technical debt, which is why it’s important to separate your business processes from the technology supporting them. Sustainably designed solutions thrive
in today’s pace of business change by ensuring that technologies can be seamlessly exchanged without disrupting the applications.
Looking to leave technical debt behind?
Here are our top tips of what to look for in a sustainable software solution
No-code development
True no-code platforms eliminate technical debt by transferring the responsibility for coding to the platform developer. They allow you to quickly build custom applications, workflows, and reports without writing a single line of code, so technical debt is never produced.
Sustainable customizations
At upgrade time, any packaged applications—and their customizations —should automatically inherit new advancements. This prevents your business from being locked into outdated technologies and saves you the time and expense of rebuilding customizations.
Seamless integrations
Any platform should use APIs to make connections with other systems easy, fast, and secure. IT teams can then spend less time maintaining and patching shoddy integrations and more time on mission-critical work.
Automation capabilities
Look for platforms that use AI to automate even the most unique business processes with workflows, business logic, and security capabilities. By automating these routine tasks, your IT team can focus on tasks that add business value and innovation.
Future-proof applications
A truly sustainable platform should be able to uptake and apply new technologies to applications without layers of patchwork or complete rewrites. This becomes a primary benefit of how applications are stored when they are not built with traditional coding mechanisms.
How to reduce technical debt
