Managing Technical Debt Plays Benefits Against Risks
November 09, 2021

Charles Caldwell
Logi Analytics

Share this

Everyone laments technical debt like it were a high-interest credit card. But just like how your CFO uses debt as capital for the business, the intelligent Product Manager knows that technical debt can help finance your path to market if you know how to manage it well.

Product managers who choose when and where it's acceptable to take on technical debt to overcome limited budget, constrained resources or critical deadlines, and budget their resources to resolve that debt at reasonable points in the future, avoid those nightmare scenarios. They recognize that taking on some debt can deliver real benefits so long as it's managed.

Finding the sweet spot between avoiding all technical debt and leveraging the right amount to get to market on a timeline that matters is a key skill for successful product teams.

Don't Build Too Little … or Too Much

Speed to market is a constant driver for product teams, with a high focus on feature delivery that can lead to an anemic architectural ramp. This is the source of technical debt that most teams are used to seeing. All the velocity is on features, and architecture "just happens" (or doesn't). Features are delivered that are not fully fleshed out, and the foundation they are built on won't support the actual feature requirements. While this is fine for an initial feature release to get feedback, repeated iterations result in a brittle product.

While a lot of technical debt comes from investing too little in supporting architecture, we see too many teams swing the other way and build far too much "infrastructure" upfront. Trying to anticipate everything a feature will ever need to do and build out the most beautifully architected backend for high-scale perfection before a single feature ships.

If the team is building too much enabling architecture at the onset, it's setting itself up for technical debt resulting from a change in requirements. Failing to get features out the door, the team doesn't get feedback until a lot of code is built. If you've got it wrong, you end up with a ton of technical debt in the form of an architecture that will never result in value to the customer.

There are, of course, feature sets that require a large amount of enabling technology. Features that have significant, complex components across multiple application tiers often resist iterative, MVP-style implementation. There are times when the MVP requires a lot of backend capability just to get the most basic version of the feature out the door. These are great cases for a buy/partner/open-source approach. Yes, you may accept some technical debt in the form of integration or "someone else's code," but if there is any risk around feature requirements, technical debt will pay dividends in the short term as you validate the feature. Place finite resources, including talent, toward solutions that could be resolved more efficiently by third-party options instead is another way technical debt mounts.

In the simplest term, reasonable technical debt is a trade-off. It's the result of identifying what's acceptable now that's worth addressing later. That's wholly manageable. What's unforeseen or overlooked that demands attention later is technical debt that every product manager wants to avoid.

To solve this and other varieties of technical debt, choose off-the-shelf options, either at the project's beginning or when they're needed. As noted above, embedded analytics allows managers to place solutions right into the development pipeline and move on. Time and talent spent focusing on other areas of the project offset the costs of buying a solution.

Debt Equilibrium

Technical debt is acceptable and even desired in some instances. When creating a genuinely trendsetting product, getting it to market as soon as feasible is the best way to obtain crucial user feedback. Addressing every possible way the new product will be used may be impossible to predict. So, creating an operational framework with simple, adaptable features that can be reliably built out into a compelling business solution for the client is a terrific way to identify and accept technical debt and leverage it for a project's benefit.

Identify technical debt and prepare for it to eliminate unpleasant surprises. Avoid it where possible and accept it where the benefits outweigh its drawbacks.

Manage and pay down debt by planning for it, choosing where and when it serves project purposes. This will ensure team momentum, the efficient delivery of products with state-of-the-art functionality, and expand the number of viable solutions to consider for addressing technical debt on projects in the future.

Charles Caldwell is VP of Product Management at Logi Analytics
Share this

The Latest

March 18, 2024

Gartner has highlighted the top trends that will impact technology providers in 2024: Generative AI (GenAI) is dominating the technical and product agenda of nearly every tech provider ...

March 15, 2024

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 4 - Part 1, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) discusses artificial intelligence and network management ...

March 14, 2024

The integration and maintenance of AI-enabled Software as a Service (SaaS) applications have emerged as pivotal points in enterprise AI implementation strategies, offering both significant challenges and promising benefits. Despite the enthusiasm surrounding AI's potential impact, the reality of its implementation presents hurdles. Currently, over 90% of enterprises are grappling with limitations in integrating AI into their tech stack ...

March 13, 2024

In the intricate landscape of IT infrastructure, one critical component often relegated to the back burner is Active Directory (AD) forest recovery — an oversight with costly consequences ...

March 12, 2024

eBPF is a technology that allows users to run custom programs inside the Linux kernel, which changes the behavior of the kernel and makes execution up to 10x faster(link is external) and more efficient for key parts of what makes our computing lives work. That includes observability, networking and security ...

March 11, 2024

Data mesh, an increasingly important decentralized approach to data architecture and organizational design, focuses on treating data as a product, emphasizing domain-oriented data ownership, self-service tools and federated governance. The 2024 State of the Data Lakehouse report from Dremio presents evidence of the growing adoption of data mesh architectures in enterprises ... The report highlights that the drive towards data mesh is increasingly becoming a business strategy to enhance agility and speed in problem-solving and innovation ...

March 07, 2024
In this digital era, consumers prefer a seamless user experience, and here, the significance of performance testing cannot be overstated. Application performance testing is essential in ensuring that your software products, websites, or other related systems operate seamlessly under varying conditions. However, the cost of poor performance extends beyond technical glitches and slow load times; it can directly affect customer satisfaction and brand reputation. Understand the tangible and intangible consequences of poor application performance and how it can affect your business ...
March 06, 2024

Too much traffic can crash a website ... That stampede of traffic is even more horrifying when it's part of a malicious denial of service attack ... These attacks are becoming more common, more sophisticated and increasingly tied to ransomware-style demands. So it's no wonder that the threat of DDoS remains one of the many things that keep IT and marketing leaders up at night ...

March 05, 2024

Today, applications serve as the backbone of businesses, and therefore, ensuring optimal performance has never been more critical. This is where application performance monitoring (APM) emerges as an indispensable tool, empowering organizations to safeguard their applications proactively, match user expectations, and drive growth. But APM is not without its challenges. Choosing to implement APM is a path that's not easily realized, even if it offers great benefits. This blog deals with the potential hurdles that may manifest when you actualize your APM strategy in your IT application environment ...

March 04, 2024

This year's Super Bowl drew in viewership of nearly 124 million viewers and made history as the most-watched live broadcast event since the 1969 moon landing. To support this spike in viewership, streaming companies like YouTube TV, Hulu and Paramount+ began preparing their IT infrastructure months in advance to ensure an exceptional viewer experience without outages or major interruptions. New Relic conducted a survey to understand the importance of a seamless viewing experience and the impact of outages during major streaming events such as the Super Bowl ...