I blogged recently about the dreaded tech debt. I blogged about how to identify it and describe it. We all know that tech debt sucks!
But what do we do about the tech debt we’ve got and how do we prevent it from happening in the future?
My number one piece of advice is to STOP piling on the tech debt by continuing to develop in your old software or platform. Think you’re not doing it? Here are some examples:
- You have an old version of your content management system. You don’t have budget to upgrade to the latest version, but you really need new functionality that won’t cost very much to implement, so you go ahead and approve the work. Why this is bad: When it comes time to upgrade your CMS, this new functionality will likely need to be redeveloped, thereby adding to the upgrade cost.
- You have an old version of your membership database and it’s not in your budget to upgrade this year. You need to bring a new Learning Management System ( LMS) online and you want to implement single sign-on between the membership database and the LMS, so you approve the project to integrate with the old membership database. Why this is bad: You’re probably not using the latest SSO protocols, and you’ll need to upgrade the SSO when you upgrade your membership database.
I know that in the real world, we can’t keep everything upgraded. But we should be upgrading and maintaining our mission-critical systems since they are the most dynamic and most used.
Make 2020 the year you burn down that tech debt!
One reply on “Don’t Pile on the Tech Debt by Developing in an Old Platform”
Agreed. To avoid tech debt, always choose a better approach that may take longer rather than take an easy but limited solution now.