CIO OPINION digital experiences . Decision makers will be trapped by the choice of leaving suboptimal code in place , delaying new projects , or recruiting new developers . Every one of these options carries a significant cost . solutions . If a market opportunity arises and the development team is distracted or unavailable , then that opportunity will likely be missed . This also applies to the ability to react to external crises .
A McKinsey report from 2022 likened technical debt to dark matter , you know it exists , you can infer its impact , but you cannot see or measure it . But CIOs surveyed by the analyst firm estimated that their technical debt was anywhere between 20 % and 40 % of the value of their digital estate .
As we have seen , debt flows directly from the costs associated with fixing issues . Resources are directed towards tasks that would not have been necessary if different coding decisions had been made .
Cost of technology debt
The lessons of technical debt are clear . If we take a shortcut today , we may face a slowdown or a standstill later in our digitalisation journey . When DevOps leaders make the case for more careful development cycles , however , they must be able to frame the problem in a way that will resonate with non-technical executives .
Technology-team leaders can point out that technical debt leads to less innovation , which inevitably impacts customer engagement . Developers that are fixing issues related to past shortcuts are not building new
Some non-technical stakeholders may be interested in the escalating financial costs of maintaining and updating applications amid technical debt . They may also be alarmed to learn that the longer the debt goes unaddressed , the more expensive it will be to fix .
Stakeholders of a financial mindset will likewise see a business risk in technical debt if they are told that it slows or prevents growth . This is also an easy case to make . Put simply , if the enterprise cannot bring new offerings to customers quickly enough , then a competitor captures that opportunity for growth .
Potentially the most damaging of all is the impact technology debt can have on cybersecurity . In the GCC ’ s highly regulated markets , private companies must master the vulnerabilities in their core business
A McKinsey report likened technical debt to dark matter , you know it exists , but you cannot measure it .
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