Technical debt accounts for nearly 40% of IT balance sheets, showcasing a burgeoning impact. It encompasses an array of complications in addition to poor coding, such as archaic documentation, outdated architecture, inefficient automation processes and inadequate testing. Enterprises often end up paying an additional 10-20% of the costs of a particular project to cover tech debt.

Amidst evolving user needs and the product platform evolution with trending technology disruptions, developers are always pressed to deliver solutions quickly and gain feedback. To counter this, they often take a tactical approach, thinking that once they understand requirements well enough or are equipped with the latest and greatest offering of the product platform, they can revisit or refine the solution components. Unfortunately, when such projects run out of time, developers avoid the rewriting or refinement step and instead develop requested features on an inherited platform capability making it a “tolerant solution” in the fast-paced requirement-to-release cycle, thus resulting in technical debt.

In the realm of AI, this technical debt is significantly more detrimental. AI offers extensive modernization opportunities, but these are jeopardized by unresolved technical debt. The potential of AI to optimize operations, deliver advanced analytics, and improve user experiences is tremendous. Yet, technical debt makes integrating AI systems challenging, as outdated systems, legacy codebases, and inefficient workflows present major obstacles. This not only delays project completions but also increases costs and diminishes the effectiveness of AI solutions. Tackling technical debt directly ensures that organizations can smoothly implement AI technologies and unlock their transformative value.

The following are some consequences of inheriting technical debt:

• Leads to accumulation over time, hindering innovation and diminishing business value
• Significant friction between business and IT
• Deteriorating usability and user experience
• Rising costs to maintain operations
• Hampering innovation - bogged down by technical debt
• The upgrade or modernization process becomes complicated and lengthy
• Team morale declines with high turnover
• Fluctuations in sprint velocity

It's similar to renovating an old building but ignoring its crumbling foundation while adding new floors on top. Eventually, such a structure is destined to collapse. This analogy applies to technical debt in IT infrastructure, where outdated practices and accumulated inefficiencies worsen the situation over time.

Critical elements driving technical debt: Unveiling countermeasures

Technical debt hampers engineers' ability to develop innovative software, adversely affecting the business value and customer experience. Below are some of the main causes of tech debt:

• Custom coding development
• Opting for "tolerance upgrade" instead of "compliance upgrade"
• Lack of a robust test automation strategy
• Release management is heavily reliant on manual processes
• Delaying new features, best practices and standards
• Expanding an MVP (Minimum Viable Product)

Over 90% of CTOs have recognized technical debt as their biggest challenge for 2024. Thanks to some of the recent innovations, companies stand a better chance to handle custom codes and prevent technical debt. Here are some of the ways to manage technical debt:

• Implement automation through a robust DevSecOps strategy
• Develop strategies that include prudent practices, codified guardrailsand stringent governance
• Initiate ad-hoc project spin-offs
• Adopt a maker-and-mender approach
• Prioritize compliance upgrades
• Ensure timely refactoring of applications
• Continuously address technical debt
• Promote STP (Straight Through Processing) as an extension of the RPA (Robotic Process Automation) strategy
• Balance the speed of releases with maintaining code quality
• Use process mining to improve processes and eliminate friction points continually

Clean Core Chronicles: Navigating Technical Debt in an Enterprise Setting

In the midst of rapid technological advancements, users often find it challenging to adapt to and evolve with generative AI (GenAI) capabilities and a UX design framework. The current monolithic method lacks a reusable component-based architecture and necessitates process optimization and identifying significant challenges. HCLTech emphasizes several key strategies for managing technical debt, including:

• DevSecOps and automation
• Compliance updates and refactoring
• Process mining and optimization

Embracing DevSecOps and automation is a highly effective strategy for managing technical debt. By integrating development and operations teams, DevSecOps facilitates tasks such as implementing changes to applications, executing code, building updates, deploying, testing, releasing and monitoring overall progress. Introducing automated testing early in the development cycle helps in identifying potential disruptions, allowing for proactive measures. This approach also enables continuous management of technical debt, preventing potential challenges.

Prioritizing compliance updates instead of basic ones and conducting refactoring to integrate out-of-the-box capabilities can significantly reduce technical debt. Basic updates tend to exacerbate both feature code debt within applications. In contrast, compliance updates concentrate on modernizing the rule base and refactoring the application to leverage new features while also phasing out outdated ones effectively. Through application refactoring, you can introduce standard features that fulfill requirements previously met by custom solutions, making your application more upgrade-friendly and stable.

Promoting process mining for heritage applications that have been developed, maintained and enhanced over time is crucial for pinpointing inefficient areas, unexpected bottlenecks and nonconformities in complex processes. This model, driven by data insights, aids in defining opportunities for optimization, reusability and reimagining a flexible business architecture to enhance productivity, lower costs and improve overall experience (Total Experience - TX).

Technical debt becomes a major hindrance for enterprises wanting to utilize new tools technologies like GenAI. Integrating innovative solutions into regular cycles not only helps enhance business outcomes but also equips companies to manage technical debt efficiently.

The HCLTech advantage: Unlocking value by mitigating “tech debt” diligently

HCLTech has collaborated with Pega, a leader in cloud software for customer engagement and operational excellence, to empower businesses to eliminate technical debt effectively. With Pega modernization playbook and framework, rapid deployment framework and a sustainable IT framework for Pega, we help transform technical debt into modernization opportunities. Our innovative approach is aimed at helping enterprises optimize crucial business processes. HCLTech Advantage Pega encompasses a plethora of new and innovative features aiding technical debt management strategy. It includes a code scanner, pre-upgrade assessment tool, environment 360 portal, design assessment tool, app360 portal code impact analyzer and unused rules or dead-code analyzer.

Additional important aspects of HCLTech Advantage Pega, such as the team compliance dashboard, ticket reduction features, intelligent analysis and the real-time operational analytics and reporting dashboard (ROAR), assist enterprises in making informed decisions during their modernization efforts.

For enterprises, it is crucial to seamlessly integrate new features and technologies while minimizing disruption to the existing infrastructure during Pega application upgrades. By updating the rule base, the application can be refactored to take advantage of new functionalities, with obsolete features being automatically removed. Our innovative strategy aims to simplify, secure and ensure compliance through codified guardrails, automation accelerators and the combined use of Pega Process Mining and the Pega GenAI Blueprint. This approach helps untangle inefficient processes and establishes a forward-looking, industry-aligned strategic process roadmap within a continuous improvement optimization model, thereby reducing technical debt at the core.

In summary, businesses can now perceive technical debt as a chance to optimize operations and explore new innovations, instead of seeing it merely as an obstacle. The financial term 'leverage' (which means using borrowed funds to increase returns from an investment or project and foster growth strategies) serves as a useful analogy for understanding technical debt. Having no technical debt is as detrimental as having too much of it.

Embracing modernization with HCLTech's Advantage Pega Modernization Playbook

HCLTech aims to help customers transform, modernize and enhance the overall experience of enterprise Pega applications disentangling them from legacy constructs and technical debt. If you are considering modernization and wish to eliminate technical debt, improve business experiences with a composable architecture and rethink business processes using the latest Pega GenAI Blueprint and advanced Pega Process Mining with data-driven insights, please contact us to learn how our HCLTech’s Advantage Pega Modernization Playbook and Assessment Framework can assist you in this journey.

The HCLTech’s Advantage Pega Modernization Playbook and Assessment Framework is a comprehensive 30-point evaluation system, spanning four dimensions: Business, Technology, Operations and Benefit Analysis. This framework aids organizations in reimagining, rediscovering, reassessing, reprioritizing, refactoring and reoptimizing their processes using data-driven insights to address and eliminate friction points.

Our playbook not only addresses the current challenges but also anticipates future needs by offering robust strategies centered around scalability, agility and innovation. By leveraging the Pega GenAI Blueprint, businesses can harness AI to streamline processes and enhance decision-making capabilities. At the same time, Pega Process Mining provides a granular view of operational efficiencies and bottlenecks, enabling targeted improvements.

Through our tailored modernization strategies, we offer a systematic approach that encompasses the assessment of current systems, identification of improvement areas and implementation of state-of-the-art solutions. Our team of experts collaborates closely with enterprises to ensure seamless integration and minimal disruption, providing continuous support and guidance throughout the transformation process.

Click here to learn more about how HCLTech can help you reduce technical debt and embark on a journey of sustainable IT practices.