Today's Technology for Tomorrow's Firm.
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BRIDGING THE GAP By Jim Boomer, CPA.CITP July 2016 • www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com 21 Technical debt is now a common term in the so ware development industry. Companies spend money assessing, controlling and "paying down" their technical debt in order to keep their products agile enough to compete in an environment where slow to market or slow to adapt can mean the death of the company. Or, to put it in other terms, not paying down your technical debt can lead to technical bankruptcy. Technical Debt in the Accounting Profession Technical debt is a highly special- ized term in many circles. However, I believe the concept has broad busi- ness and technolog y implications in the accounting profession. If you don't think you are in technical debt (or aren't sure), let's take a quick test. • How many versions of Quick Books do you support? • How ma ny appl icat ions do you run that are no longer on support contracts or updated regularly? • In your firm, how many different "s t a nd a rd de s k top" s e t up s a re there? is includes the main com- puter, monitors, etc. that are on a typical desk. Write down vendor, model, operating system, size of monitors and other descriptors in a matrix. See how many different variants you come up with. • If you sat for 3 minutes, how many items could you list that are "that's ju st t he w ay it is" steps i n you r normal work processes? What does technical debt mean to me? e results of the test above will give you a score of sorts. Lower is beer, and if it's high, then you may have one or more technical debts in place. bts one or more technical debts in place. in one or more technical debts in place. place. one or more technical debts in place. e point of this exercise is to show point e point of this exercise is to show of e point of this exercise is to show this e point of this exercise is to show exercise is to show you that there are places in your firm where you've made choices that are like Cunningham's description: a choice that is a shortcut. During the change that created the shortcut, not all of the questions and loose ends were addressed (or even k nown), resulting in a cost to maintain and an even higher cost to fi x. e issue with technical debt, like any debt, is that it accrues interest and must be paid off before a new "purchase" can be made. In many firms, the cost of the technical debt comes at the expense of innovation at either the technology or firm level. e resources for maintaining a large technical debt cannot be used for anything else. If you have a strong break/fi x culture, or have a lot of fires that come out of nowhere, you are in a high technical debt situation. How do I assess my technical debt, and what should I do with that information? Regular review of all areas of tech- nolog y and process as they relate to ser vice lines will uncover your technical debts. e best way to uncover debt in existing systems is to do process reviews, either using Lean Six Sigma or another method- ology. In doing so, you will discover areas of repetition, inefficiency or undocumented workarounds that highlight technical debts. Once documented, you must look at each debt as an area of high potential. Finger pointing or defend- ing debt can only lead to situations where that debt could default, leav- ing you in a panicked situation and with lile preparation to deal with the resulting problems. Make sure that mistakes are used to find technical debt, and that the outcome is paying that debt down. Look past the "we've always done it this way" to see how much a stale process is actually costing you to maintain. A lso, realize that a new system or application will not solve technical debts unless the debts being put into the new system are paid off. Vendor changes are a great time to assess and fi x old debts, and as the new system rolls out, a way to acknowledge and deal with new debts incurred by the change. Going for ward, make sure you proactively keep track of technical debts. Decide on a regular basis what debts you will pay down, and make sure that you track new debts as they are incurred. is method of continuous improvement w ill improve your baseline of opera- tions and allow your firm to adapt quick ly to change demands, new niche development, and improved quality of service. Making you more successful and future ready. Jim Boomer is CEO of Boomer Con- sulting , Inc. He is the director of the Boomer Technology Circles™ and an expert on managing technology within an accounting firm. He also serves as a strategic planning and technology con- sultant and firm adviser in the areas of performance and risk management. jim.boomer@cpapracticeadvisor.com I n 1992, Ward Cunningham introduced a simple concept to the international soware development community. e inventor of the wiki, Cunningham discussed how releasing a soware program with code that is not well tested is like going into (tech- nical) debt. e customers would see a functioning product, but the ability to update the program, adapt to new change and do so efficiently were compromised because of short term solutions that cut corners. Does Your Firm Hav Does Your Firm Have ?