Managing Technical Debt is a Balancing Act
Technical debt is a nightmare for product managers. It can slow down teams and inhibit response time for delivering quality products to market. Yet, there are times when technical debt can be beneficial; but turning it from a headache to a positive is a balancing act. Nimble project managers and developers should strive to develop […]
3 Reasons Your Digital Transformation Stalled
The more a company modernizes, the more value it gets from the cloud, but not all digital transformation efforts are created—and executed—equally. According to Gartner, “87% of senior business leaders say digitalization is a company priority, yet only 40% of organizations have brought digital initiatives to scale … [and] without a shared vision across the […]
Some Technical Debt is Self-Resolving
But don’t count on it. Fellow DevOps.com contributor Bill Doerrfeld recently wrote, “Enterprises Face Growing Technical Debt,” a great article about trends in technical debt, and it got me thinking about some of the things that have been going on in the industry over the last few years. As I’ve mentioned before, the changes underlying […]
Enterprises Face Growing Technical Debt
Technologists are always espousing new, trendy development solutions. More robust frameworks, increased delivery, better integration. But rarely do these proponents consider the long-term side effects of introducing new technologies. As a result, technical debt is an all-to-common occurrence in most companies. Nearly a third of IT budgets are dedicated to addressing technical debt. Devoting so […]
Cattle, Not Kittens – Revisited
The early days of DevOps were filled with pronouncements that we needed to treat our servers as cattle, not pets (kittens). For a year or so, the refrain was everywhere. And we did. We detached servers from dedicated hardware, we made spin up and spin down so easy that we just replaced malfunctioning servers (which […]
Communicating with Management About Technical Debt
We’re all familiar with the challenges of technical debt. While it’s often unavoidable–due to time constraints, resource considerations or simply a lack of good information–it still weighs on our minds and puts us on the defensive. It makes future changes that much more difficult. As it builds up, it generates that nagging sense of an […]
Adding Accountability with ‘You Build It, You Run It’
Let’s see if this scenario resonates with anyone: Your department, organization, company, etc. is beginning to embrace DevOps practices, which is, of course, an amazing step in the right direction! One of those key practices is the “You Build It, You Run It” (YBI/YRI) mantra that helps facilitate a higher level of quality and accountability. […]