Did you know that tech debt is ripping your business off?

The Tech Debt Report highlights what code or design debt is costing businesses worldwide

Wondering what technical debt actually is? It's a measure of the cost of reworking a solution. As organisations strive to expedite time-to-market, and empower business users and analysts to create business apps, controlling technical debt naturally becomes a top concern.

Tech debt is growing at an accelerating rate, and right now, it’s costing US businesses $6,000 a second. Tech debt is not just legacy cost, it’s opportunity cost. It robs you of resources, time, energy and the ability to innovate, adapt and grow.

What causes tech debt?

It happens when an organisation chooses an easy, yet limited solution, which results in:

• Time pressure - development teams often release applications that aren't full-featured or that don’t have key capabilities because of pressure to deliver on an accelerated timeline. A few teams even short-change performance and quality to get to market quicker.
• Constant change - even full-featured applications completed on time may arrive in the marketplace already out of date. Ever-increasing customer expectations, the rise of new market opportunities and threats as well as developer turnover creates ongoing challenges for IT leaders.
• Outdated technology - developing modern applications typically involves a number of different coding languages, developer frameworks and libraries, which can become outdated or not supported each year. What you choose today could be outmoded tomorrow.

Tech debt is estimated to cost businesses $5 trillion in the next 10 years - and the bigger the company, the bigger the problem.

The Tech Debt Report - insights into how companies across the globe and across industries view technical debt

Our partner, OutSystems, surveyed IT leaders around the globe on the topic of tech debt to better understand challenges, initiate discussions leading to real-world solutions. The findings are designed to create increased awareness and understanding of the issue, and spark discussions that can lead to real-world solutions. The results are startling - consider this:

• On average, companies spend 28% of their budgets addressing tech debt - almost the same as the 33% they spend on driving innovation
• Of those surveyed, 51% agree tech debt impacts their ability to serve new markets, 64% agree that it will have a major impact on their business in the future, and 69% agree it limits their ability to innovate

Tech debt is not a secret; in fact, the report showed that IT leaders recognise the causes of tech debt and acknowledge that it's time to address it, but they're not acting. Only 36% believe it’s something they can manage in the future, and as a result, organisations worldwide are facing the consequences.

Tech debt can be managed

The report also outlines how, with the right application platform on board, you can adapt, evolve and improve your apps as and when your business needs them - without the worry of tech debt. You can still build fast, but you can also build for the future. With the OutSystems platform, we'll help you ensure that you build it right, build it fast, and build for change.

The Tech Debt Report will give you a clear insight into the cost of tech debt, it's causes and solutions. Download it now.