Tech companies including Adobe are taking a new look at a big industry debt issue – CNBC

Technical debt — a nebulous term that generally refers to the cost of maintaining legacy technology — can hold organizations back from innovation, research suggests.

A survey from global consulting firm Protiviti of more than 1,000 technology executives around the world says technical debt impacts nearly 70% of organizations’ ability to innovate.

Christine Livingston, managing director of emerging technologies at Protiviti, said it’s not just the dependence on these legacy systems that inhibits innovation, but also the fact that many innovation goals do not have the backing of a strategy to propel them into motion. This is evidenced in the data, where 79% of organizations report having defined innovation goals, but only 54% can outline an accompanying strategy for achieving it.

“They know where they want to be, but they’re not sure how to get there,” said Livingston. 

Despite the drag of technical debt that the data suggests, some industry executives say it gets a bad reputation. “If you’re tech-debt-free, you’re not innovating,” said Frans Xavier, CTO of low-code/no-code security automation platform Swimlane.  

In this sense, technical debt is a signal of iteration. In fact, in a recent report from consumer electronics company TE Connectivity, 55% of the engineers surveyed said it’s iteration — not total transformation — that represents innovation at its core.

Adobe head of strategic development for creative cloud partnerships Chris Duffey is looking to reshape technical debt. “I would offer to reframe technical debt as the value of insight gathering throughout the innovation creation process,” Duffey said.

The “fail fast” dogma that propels much of the technology industry (when not taken literally) references experimentation, insight gathering, and optimization, he added.

This can be hard to see when you look solely at the data, in part because it’s difficult to quantify the process of innovation. For example, organizations that responded to the Protiviti survey invest 31% of their IT budget and devote 21% of IT resources just to manage legacy systems. However, from a nuanced perspective, it’s important to ask: How much of that same budget is going towards innovating existing core or emerging new technologies?

The top technologies that organizations plan to implement in the next three years are Web3, robotics, and low-code/no-code platforms, according to Protiviti. That doesn’t include AI, which half of respondents have already implemented.

Given the uncertain economic climate, leaders are compressing budgets, which takes shape in things like mass layoffs and the defunding of experimental products and services. Duffey likens this defunding to the human body, which constricts blood flow to outside extremities in challenging times. However, he added, “Innovation can and should be foundational to core products and services.”

In short, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel, but rather build on technology already in motion.

This practice of iterating on, rather than abandoning, current operations also serves to comfort leaders who are still in the process of building technological confidence, said Brian Price, CEO and co-founder of cloud enablement company Kion. “Still, there are some companies out there that like to go and hug their servers,” he said.

Despite reduction of operational costs, legacy systems in the technical debt bucket are core operational functions that an organization can’t just turn off. However, companies can get creative with what they have. This “forces people to get past the problems that have already been solved,” Price said.

Talent gaps could be an impediment to this creativity. Respondents to Protiviti’s survey say the largest talent gaps exist in design thinking, solution architecture, enterprise agility, and technical knowledge. Even with technological advancements, humans are the brain.

“Your AI is only going to be as good as the people you have training it and sustaining it,” Livingston said.

This perspective contradicts the notion of “human-competitive” AI experiments as outlined in the Future of Life Institute’s open letter to halt machine learning progression, which boasts noteworthy signatories like Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak. Rather than being competitive with technology, Livingston argues it’s not an either-or and that humans will ultimately lead the way.

To fill talent gaps in the technology space, Price recommends infusing experts from the outside and encouraging documentation. He added that organizations should take a step back and outline an enterprise architecture. “If you’ve got consistency across the way you’re building applications,” he said, “that can also help bring in more talent to your organization to help move things forward.”

Duffey says organizational agreement on where and how value is created in the innovation process is foundational. “Once there’s that shared vision, I would argue the talent is there,” he said.

While the Protiviti survey gives its definition of technical debt, others have their own. Xavier defines technical debt as the amount of software or technology systems that deter organizations from achieving specified innovation goals at their desired rate. 

Whatever lens you look at technical debt from, it’s crucial to define it for your organization, Xavier said. Once you do this, attach business values to your technical debt so you can find ways to effectively manage it and fill the gaps with innovation, he added.

All things considered, Protiviti’s hypothesis behind the survey has largely proven true: there’s a crucial equilibrium that exists between technical debt and innovation efforts, but technology will only continue to evolve. Therefore, “you need that ability to be able to test, iterate, and learn very quickly,” Livingston said, and modern architectures can help technical leaders do so in ways that are efficient in time, focus, and cost.