Whether it’s buying a dodgy microwave meal from a gas station, kicking a sock under the bed during last minute clean before guests arrive, or cutting across the lawn to get to the front door faster, we all take shortcuts. But unlike enterprise-software delivery, these decisions rarely cause any collateral damage.
The ramifications of taking shortcuts in IT, however, are much more serious. These decisions – i.e. ‘technical debt’, the ‘rework’ debt owed after opting for a convenient solution instead of a better approach that takes longer – can have implications on your company’s ability to grow and adapt to change.
Fortunately, since the ’90s when the term was coined by Ward Cunningham, we’ve learnt how to identify and manage most forms of technical debt, understanding how to limit its impact and manage the interest.
Your organization is a system too though, and sometimes we need to make decisions that make tradeoffs against culture. Unfortunately, when it comes to this debt – known as ‘cultural debt’ – we are much less disciplined. We often make decisions in the dark, without understanding how they are going to play out over the long term. These decisions are called ‘dark debt’, which builds up over time and creates a toxic work environment where people are not set up for success.
If your organization’s culture is impacted by any of the following issues, than you’re probably accumulating dark debt. This debt has the potential to severely damage how efficiently and effectively you’re executing IT initiatives – now and in the future:
- Invisible and unplanned work
- Late work or low-quality work
- Unclear priorities and wasted effort
But fear not. In this webinar – in conjunction with DevOps.com – our IT Manager, John Rauser, and our Director of Digital Transformation, Dominica DeGrandis, discuss ways to help identify dark debt so you can begin repairing the culture of your organization, and begin improving the effectiveness of your IT processes.
